PhD student presents research at national conference

By Peter Murphy

Published April 20, 2018 This content is archived.

A PhD structural engineering student presented her research at the first ever LS-DYNA User’s Meeting for Building and Civil Applications. The meeting was held in Livermore, California and organized by Arup, an international engineering and design firm, and Livermore Software Technology Corporation (LSTC), the technology company that developed LS-DYNA.

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Figure of LS-DYNA.

LS-DYNA is a general-purpose finite element program capable of simulating complex real-world problems. Ching-Ching Yu, the structural engineering PhD student, advised by Professor Andrew Whittaker, uses this program for numerical modeling in seismic fluid structure interaction (FSI).  Her research includes an analytical solution and numerical analysis for seismic FSI for fluid-tank systems. She will conduct earthquake simulator tests of a fluid-tank system (a scaled reactor vessel, filled with water) in UB’s MCEER, later this year.

Yu chose the Arbitrary-Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) and Incompressible Computational Fluid Dynamics (ICFD) to conduct her numerical analysis in LS-DYNA. Using these two formulations allowed her to develop the analytical solution needed for preliminary seismic qualification and design, and the numerical modeling Yu needs to simulate the seismic response of the fluid-tank systems.

The fluid-tank systems will be tested under three directional extreme motion. The figures to the right show the fluid pressure response of the ICFD model for a reactor vessel with and without central internal under extreme shaking.

The LS-DYNA User’s Meeting provided Yu with unique opportunities to discuss her findings with consultants throughout the United States. The dataset from the earthquake simulator will enable her to complete the validation study associate with her research. Yu will conduct simulations in late 2018.