We extend the Discontinuity-Enriched Finite Element Method (DE-FEM) to simulate intersecting discontinuities, such as those encountered in polycrystalline materials, multi-material wedge problems, and branched cracks. The proposed hierarchical enrichment functions capture weak and strong discontinuities at junctions within a single formulation. Several numerical applications to branched cracks and polycrystalline microstructures under both thermal and mechanical loads are presented to demonstrate the proposed method. Results indicate that DE-FEM can accurately capture complex discontinuous primal and gradient fields and attain convergence rates comparable to those of standard FEM using fitted meshes. The main advantages of DE-FEM equipped with the proposed junction enrichment functions lie in the method's ability to model intersecting discontinuities using meshes that are completely decoupled from them and its robustness in reproducing correct displacement and strain jumps across them, as demonstrated by a patch test. This work thus highlights the potential of DE-FEM for applications to problems characterized by the presence of multiple intersecting discontinuities, posing a valid alternative to traditional FEM and eXtended/Generalized Finite Element (X/GFEM) Methods.

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The published article contains a mistake in the notation of the strain–displacement matrix (Formula presented.) in Voigt notation concerning the isoparametric mapping and in the notation of the corresponding derivatives. As the mistakes relate only to the notation, and the implementation in the code was done correctly, they bear no consequences for the remainder of the manuscript and the results presented therein. The (Formula presented.) matrix defined inline after Eq. (11) on page 5 (repeated on pages 8 and 17) should be written as (Formula presented.) for an enriched element with n original shape functions and m enrichment functions. The differential operator (Formula presented.) in Eq. 12 should then have been defined in Voigt notation and in global coordinates as (Formula presented.) for elastostatics in 2-D and 3-D, respectively, and (Formula presented.) for heat conductivity in 2-D and 3-D, respectively. The derivatives in global coordinates are computed from the derivatives in local coordinates as (Formula presented.) for standard and enriched shape functions, respectively, where (Formula presented.) is the Jacobian of the intersected original element and (Formula presented.) is the Jacobian of the integration element. Furthermore, the derivative of (Formula presented.) with respect to the enriched node location (Formula presented.) in Equation 28 should be written as (Formula presented.) Note that the terms in (Formula presented.) corresponding to the standard shape functions are zero (this equation replaces Eq. 29 of the manuscript): (Formula presented.) as the Jacobian of the parent element is not influenced by the enriched node location, and the derivatives of the standard shape functions with respect to local coordinates of the parent element are constant. The components in (Formula presented.) corresponding to the enrichment functions are computed using (this equation replaces Eq. 30 in the manuscript) (Formula presented.) where the second term is zero because the derivatives of the enrichment function with respect to local coordinates are constant and independent of the enriched node location in global coordinates.

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Stress analysis is an all-pervasive practice in engineering design. With displacement-based finite element analysis, directly-calculated stress fields are obtained in a post-processing step by computing the gradient of the displacement field—therefore less accurate. In enriched finite element analysis (EFEA), which provides unprecedented versatility by decoupling the finite element mesh from material interfaces, cracks, and structural boundaries, stress recovery is further aggravated when such discontinuities get arbitrarily close to nodes of the mesh; the presence of small area integration elements often yields overestimated stresses, which could have a detrimental impact on nonlinear analyses (e.g., damage or plasticity) since stress concentrations are just a nonphysical numerical artifact. In this article, we propose a stress recovery procedure for enhancing the stress field in problems where the field gradient is discontinuous. The formulation is based on a stress improvement procedure (SIP) initially proposed for low-order standard finite elements. Although generally applicable to all EFEA, we investigate the technique with the Interface-enriched Generalized Finite Element Method and compare the procedure to other post-processing smoothing techniques. We demonstrate that SIP for EFEA provides an enhanced stress field that is more accurate than directly-calculated stresses—even when compared with standard FEM with fitted meshes.

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We propose a fully immersed topology optimization procedure to design structures with tailored fracture resistance under linear elastic fracture mechanics assumptions for brittle materials. We use a level set function discretized by radial basis functions to represent the topology and the Interface-enriched Generalized Finite Element Method (IGFEM) to obtain an accurate structural response. The technique assumes that cracks can nucleate at right angles from the boundary, at the location of enriched nodes that are added to enhance the finite element approximation. Instead of performing multiple finite element analyses to evaluate the energy release rates (ERRs) of all potential cracks—a procedure that would be computationally intractable—we approximate them by means of topological derivatives after a single enriched finite element analysis of the uncracked domain. ERRs are then aggregated to construct the objective function, and the corresponding sensitivity formulation is derived analytically by means of an adjoint formulation. Several numerical examples demonstrate the technique's ability to tailor fracture resistance, including the well-known benchmark L-shaped bracket and a multiple-loading optimization problem for obtaining a structure with fracture resistance anisotropy.

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Metamaterials can display unusual and superior properties that come from their carefully designed structure rather than their composition. Metamaterials have permeated large swatches of science, including electromagnetics and mechanics. Although metamaterials hold the promise for realizing technological advances, their potential to enhance interactions between humans and materials has largely remained unexplored. Here, we devise a class edible mechanical metamaterials with tailored fracture properties to control mouthfeel sensory experience. Using chocolate as a model material, we first demonstrate how to create and control the fracture anisotropy, and the number of cracks, and demonstrate that these properties are captured in mouthfeel experience. We further use topology optimization to rationally design edible metamaterials with maximally anisotropic fracture strength. Our work opens avenues for the use of metamaterials to control fracture and to enhance human-matter interactions.@en

In this work, an object-oriented geometric engine is proposed to solve problems with discontinuities, for instance, material interfaces and cracks, by means of unfitted, immersed, or enriched finite element methods (FEMs). Both explicit and implicit representations, such as geometric entities and level sets, are introduced to describe configurations of discontinuities. The geometric engine is designed in an object-oriented way and consists of several modules. For efficiency, a (Formula presented.) -d tree data structure that partitions the background mesh is constructed for detecting cut elements whose neighbors are found by means of a dual graph structure. Moreover, the implementation for creating enriched nodes, integration elements, and physical groups is described in detail, and the corresponding pseudo-code is also provided. The complexity and efficiency of the geometric engine are investigated by solving 2-D and 3-D discontinuous models. The capability of the geometric engine is demonstrated on several numerical examples. Topology optimization and problems with intersecting discontinuities are handled with enriched FEMs, where enriched discretizations obtained from the geometric engine are used for the analysis. Furthermore, polycrystalline structures that overlap with an unfitted mesh are considered, where integration elements are created so they align with grain boundaries. Another example shows that the Stanford bunny, which is discretized by a surface mesh with triangular elements, can be fully immersed into a 3-D background mesh. Finally, we share a list of main findings and conclude that the proposed geometric engine is general, robust, and efficient.

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Enriched finite element methods have gained traction in recent years for modeling problems with material interfaces and cracks. By means of enrichment functions that incorporate a priori behavior about the solution, these methods decouple the finite element (FE) discretization from the geometric configuration of such discontinuities. Taking advantage of this greater flexibility, recent studies have proposed the adoption of Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines (NURBS) to preserve the interfaces' exact geometries throughout the analysis. In this article, we investigate NURBS-based geometries in the context of the Discontinuity-Enriched Finite Element Method (DE-FEM) based on linear field approximations. While optimal convergence is retained for problems with weak discontinuities without singularities, representing exact geometry via NURBS does not yield noticeable improvements when extracting stress intensity factors of cracked specimens. For low-order elements, we conclude that the benefits of exact geometry representation do not outweigh the increased complexity in formulation and implementation. The choice of linear FEs hinders the accuracy of the proposed formulation, suggesting that its full potential may only be unleashed by increasing the field representation order.

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Cracks, which could nucleate and propagate in engineering structures, could have an adverse effect on mechanical performance and even lead to catastrophic failure. Thus, it is critical to investigate structural behavior under fracture, which requires an appropriate modeling methodology for fracture analysis. Furthermore, designing structures that are resilient to fracture is highly desired, where it is necessary to find a computational design technique for improving the structural fracture resistance. This thesis focuses on realizing these two goals....@en

During design optimization, a smooth description of the geometry is important, especially for problems that are sensitive to the way interfaces are resolved, e.g., wave propagation or fluid-structure interaction. A level set description of the boundary, when combined with an enriched finite element formulation, offers a smoother description of the design than traditional density-based methods. However, existing enriched methods have drawbacks, including ill-conditioning and difficulties in prescribing essential boundary conditions. In this work, we introduce a new enriched topology optimization methodology that overcomes the aforementioned drawbacks; boundaries are resolved accurately by means of the Interface-enriched Generalized Finite Element Method (IGFEM), coupled to a level set function constructed by radial basis functions. The enriched method used in this new approach to topology optimization has the same level of accuracy in the analysis as the standard finite element method with matching meshes, but without the need for remeshing. We derive the analytical sensitivities and we discuss the behavior of the optimization process in detail. We establish that IGFEM-based level set topology optimization generates correct topologies for well-known compliance minimization problems.

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In the effort to develop disruptive quantum technologies, germanium is emerging as a versatile material to realize devices capable of encoding, processing and transmitting quantum information. These devices leverage the special properties of holes in germanium, such as their inherently strong spin–orbit coupling and their ability to host superconducting pairing correlations. In this Review, we start by introducing the physics of holes in low-dimensional germanium structures, providing key insights from a theoretical perspective. We then examine the materials-science progress underpinning germanium-based planar heterostructures and nanowires. We go on to review the most significant experimental results demonstrating key building blocks for quantum technology, such as an electrically driven universal quantum gate set with spin qubits in quantum dots and superconductor–semiconductor devices for hybrid quantum systems. We conclude by identifying the most promising avenues towards scalable quantum information processing in germanium-based systems.

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Generating matching meshes for finite element analysis is not always a convenient choice, for instance, in cases where the location of the boundary is not known a priori or when the boundary has a complex shape. In such cases, enriched finite element methods can be used to describe the geometric features independently from the mesh. The Discontinuity‐Enriched Finite Element Method (DE‐FEM) was recently proposed for solving problems with both weak and strong discontinuities within the computational domain. In this paper, we extend DE‐FEM to treat fictitious domain problems, where the mesh‐independent boundaries might either describe a discontinuity within the object, or the boundary of the object itself. These boundaries might be given by an explicit expression or an implicit level set. We demonstrate the main assets of DE‐FEM as an immersed method by means of a number of numerical examples; we show that the method is not only stable and optimally convergent but, most importantly, that essential boundary conditions can be prescribed strongly.@en

A new enriched finite element technique, named the Discontinuity-Enriched Finite Element Method (DE-FEM), was introduced recently for solving problems with both weak and strong discontinuities in 2-D. In this mesh-independent procedure, enriched degrees of freedom are added to new nodes collocated at the intersections between discontinuities and the sides of finite elements of the background mesh. In this work we extend DE-FEM to 3-D and describe in detail the implementation of a geometric engine capable of handling interactions between discontinuities and the background mesh. Several numerical examples in linear elastic fracture mechanics demonstrate the capability and performance of DE-FEM in handling discontinuities in a fully mesh-independent manner. We compare convergence properties and the ability to extract stress intensity factors with standard FEM. Most importantly, we show DE-FEM provides a stable formulation with regard to the condition number of the resulting system stiffness matrix.

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Wide bandgap gallium nitride material has highly favorable electronic properties for next generation power and high frequency electronic devices. A less widely studied application is highly miniaturized chemical and gas sensors capable of operating in harsh environment conditions. In this work we present our recent developments on design, fabrication and testing of AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) based sensors for detection of various gases. First, the method of as-fabricated device baseline value stabilization is demonstrated. Secondly, the impact of sensor design is discussed with the emphasis on gate electrode geometry optimizations to enhance sensing performance. Then we present the sensing characteristics of Pt-HEMTs towards H ₂ S and compare them to H ₂ and NO ₂ . Finally we demonstrate recent results of NO ₂ detection with Ti/Au based HEMT sensors, which are superior to those using Pt based devices.

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In this paper, we propose a stress recovery procedure for low-order finite elements in 3D. For each finite element, the recovered stress field is obtained by satisfying equilibrium in an average sense and by projecting the directly calculated stress field onto a conveniently chosen space. Compared with existing recovery techniques, the current procedure gives more accurate stress fields, is simpler to implement, and can be applied to different types of elements without further modification. We demonstrate, through a set of examples in linear elasticity, that the recovered stresses converge at a higher rate than that of directly calculated stresses and that, in some cases, the rate of convergence is the same as that of the displacement field.

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