Prediction of fatigue damage by random vibration using isogeometric and finite element analysis

At present, the Finite Element Analysis (FEA) method is indispensable in the field of simulation technology, as this kind of numerical analysis method can assist engineers to predict results, which are often difficult to obtain from experimental tests. However, there exist some problems in terms of finite element mesh generation time and geometric representation. In this studying, we adopted a new numerical analysis method, Isogeometric Analysis (IGA) to develop static and dynamic analyses on two models, a notched plate and a wind turbine tower model in Ls Dyna software. From the static convergence analysis result, it is shown that IGA is more time-efficient compared with FEA. In terms of fatigue analysis results, IGA can predict the fatigue life corresponding very well to the fatigue life computed by FEA. It can be concluded that IGA is appropriate for the numerical analysis.