An integrated simulation method for coupled dynamic systems

Partitioned methods have been widely used in multiphysics and large-scale structure-media problems since they allow decomposition of a complex system into smaller subsystems. Although they have been considered to be superior to monolithic methods in terms of software reuse, difficulties still exist in the implementation process. This paper addresses these difficulties and proposes a new method to ease the coupling of the dynamic subsystems analyzed with different finite element codes. This is enabled by the development of a new staggered approach such that each involved program acts as a black box that is accessible only through model input and output, that is, displacements and forces, at the interface boundary. The accuracy and stability of the proposed method are numerically evaluated. A practical method to determine the maximum time step for stable solutions is also proposed. Two application examples are presented to verify the algorithm and demonstrate potential of the proposed method.