Python Special Topic

Ruiyang Jin
ruiyang.jin@stx.ox.ac.uk
St Cross College, University of Oxford

July, 2019
Contents
1 Introduction and Motivation 1
1.1 Bifurcation Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2 Newton Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.3 FEniCS Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

2 Deflection of a Beam 5

3 Strong statement of the problem 6

4 Variational statement of the problem 7

5 FEniCS implementation 8

6 Results 9

7 Conclusion 10

References 11
1 Introduction and Motivation
Materials exhibiting significant deformations under loads are extremely important in
a wide range of engineering problems. Possible applications include avoiding failure of
structures due to buckling and the use of endoscope in medical imaging application.
Early work has predominantly been focused on the investigation of bending materials
which is one of the major problems studied in elasticity theory. Also, one of the
mathematical sub-problems considered in solid mechanics is that the bending and
buckling behaviour of constrained and unconstrained slender elastic beams. The first
rigorous mathematical treatment of this goes all the way back to the work of Euler,
which builds upon the earlier work founded by members of the Bernoulli family.
Together, their work mathematically describes the one-dimensional curves of beams
under elastic deformations. Extensive research has been carried out on Euler’s elastica
in the past few decades, including finding analytical solutions in special cases [1],
explaining several uniqueness issues [2] and undertaking a numerical simulation of
the bifurcation structure [3].
This paper explores the deformation of a elastic beam under different load situa-
tions in different dimensions. As we are interested in the behaviour of elastic materials
under possibly large deformations due to bending and buckling, we focus on a specific
model in finite elasticity theory which describes hyper-elastic materials. The resulting
equations obtained can be highly nonlinear and leads to a bifurcation phenomenon,
and it can be studied by means of numerical simulations using the finite element
method. In this section, we provide a brief introduction to the bifurcation theory, the
use of Newton method for solving highly nonlinear problems and a powerful frame-
work where all the numerics is performed, called FEniCS. In Section 2, we discuss the
beam theory and provide a comprehensive derivation of Euler-Bernoulli equation. In
Section 3, we rewrite the PDE problem as a variational problem and provide exper-
imental results for loads of varying magnitudes and conduct convergence tests using
method of manufactured solutions. In Section 4, we consider the deformation of a
slender vertical beam under axial loads and illustrate the detailed FEniCS implemen-
tation. The results are visualised using PARAVIEW [4]. Last but not the least, we
discuss the hyperelasticity models for two and three dimensions and study the effect
of twisting a cuboid that is made up of a hyper-elastic material.

1
1.1 Bifurcation Theory
First, we can consider a very general setting, where the nonlinear equations are given
by
f (u, λ) = 0 (1)

Given the exact form of the equations f , we make a clear distinction between the
variables u and λ. Here, we denote u as the set of variables and λ as the set of model
parameters. Sometimes, the difference between u and λ can be hard to determine,
but for the clarity of this paper, we consider the variables u as the observable output
of an experiment while the parameters λ govern the setting of an experiment. A
natural question to ask is how the output of the model u will vary if the parameter λ
is altered. Often, when the parameter λ passes a critical value λc , the solution may
no longer be unique and leads to the bifurcation phenomenon.
For instance, we can consider a simple problem of the deformation of a horizontally
placed slender beam under a horizontal load λ. As shown in Figure 1, when the load λ
is smaller than the critical value λc , it leads to a beam of shorter length instead of any
bending. As the value of the load increases and eventually exceeds the critical value
λc , it induces an out of plane deformation of the beam, for which the phenomenon is
referred to as buckling. If we further raise the load, this can result in the deformation
of more complicated shapes as shown in Figure 1. Such behaviours are known as the
bifurcation in the applied mathematics literature and have been well studied.

Figure 1: Deformation of a horizontally placed beam under a vertical load λ

In general, the bifurcations are visualised by means of a bifurcation diagram. The

2
1.2 Newton Method

3
1.3 FEniCS Framework
1. Identify the PDE

2. Write the problem in the weak formulation

4
2 Deflection of a Beam
dx dw
= cos θ and = sin θ (2)
ds ds

[T (s + δs) − T (s)] cos θ + [N (s) − N (s + δs)] sin θ = 0 (3)

5
3 Strong statement of the problem

6
4 Variational statement of the problem

7
5 FEniCS implementation

8
6 Results

9
7 Conclusion

10
References
[1] G Domokos, P Holmes, and B Royce. Constrained euler buckling. In Mechanics:
From Theory to Computation, pages 413–446. Springer, 2000.

[2] Alain Pocheau and Benoı̂t Roman. Uniqueness of solutions for constrained elas-
tica. Physica D: Nonlinear Phenomena, 192(3-4):161–186, 2004.

[3] Philip Holmes, Gábor Domokos, John Schmitt, and Imre Szeberényi. Constrained
euler buckling: an interplay of computation and analysis. Computer Methods in
Applied Mechanics and Engineering, 170(3-4):175–207, 1999.

[4] Anders Logg, Kent-Andre Mardal, and Garth Wells. Automated solution of dif-
ferential equations by the finite element method: The FEniCS book, volume 84.
Springer Science & Business Media, 2012.

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