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Biswajit Banerjee's blog

Fractal surface mesh generation

Submitted by Biswajit Banerjee on

Saber El Arem (node/14053 ) wanted to know how a fractal surface mesh could be created.

I've had to do that in the past.  What I did was to use Arjun Viswanathan's 1999 Matlab snippet on creating a plasma fractal and write a wrapper around it to create an output file that could be read by the then available version of Abaqus.

I've attached a couple of Matlab files that should be able to do the job.   The .txt extensions are needed because iMechanica does not accept files with .m extensions.

ME/PhD Positions open: Fracture Simulation for Visual Effects

Submitted by Biswajit Banerjee on

ME/PhD Positions open:   Fracture Simulation for Visual Effects

High speed simulations of the fracture of wood, glass, concrete, brick walls, and many other materials are used every day in the visual
effects industry. The project team will develop the next generation of fracture effects technology, bringing visual effects fracturing to the next level through novel computational methods in conjunction with realistic material models for deformation and fracture.


11th Global Congress on Manufacturing and Management GCMM 2012

Submitted by Biswajit Banerjee on

Dear Colleagues



This is a gentle reminder that the final date for submission of abstracts to the



11th Global Congress on Manufacturing and Management GCMM 2012



has been extended to 31 March 2012.



You are cordially invited to submit a paper and be a part of this event.



Spring stiffness of a helical spring

Submitted by Biswajit Banerjee on

Once in a while I have to find the stiffness of a spring that I get from the local hardware shop.  I usually use a formula that can be found in some books on mechanics of materials.

But the assumptions bother me a bit because the springs that I used usually underwent large deformations and I wasn't sure whether the numbers I was using were correct or not.  

To check the formula I compared its predicted k to numbers from Abaqus simulations and found reasonably good results for many situations - but not for soft springs.

Notes on thermoplasticity

Submitted by Biswajit Banerjee on

I've recently had the opportunity to take another look at plasticity in the large deformation context.  I've avoided going into geometric and other issues involved with multiplicative deformations (points stressed in earlier blog posts by Giovanni (node/11545), Arash (node/11623)  and Xiabo (node/11599).  Attached are some old notes that I'd prepared some years ago to help me with the details.  I hope they're of use to other students of mechanics.

-- Biswajit

A comparison of Ansys Shell181 and Solsh190 elements

Submitted by Biswajit Banerjee on

Please find attached a report on a comparison between ANSYS SHELL181 and SOLSH190 elements with particular emphasis on applicability to linear elastic sandwich panels.

Title: Comparison of Ansys elements Shell181 and Solsh190

Abstract: