Introduction

Objectives

The eXtended Finite Element Method (XFEM), the Generalized Finite Element Method (GFEM) and more generally Partition of Unity Methods (PUM) have played an increasingly important role to simulate various phenomena in Structural Mechanics and Engineering. In a sense, these methods belong to the larger class of Fictitious Domain Methods.

These methods have two main characteristics. On the one hand, the ability to add, locally, a priori knowledge about the solution to the approximation space in order  to capture particular features such as discontinuities and singularities present in the solution exactly. On the other hand the ability to propagate discontinuities and singularities without any re-meshing operation.

XFEM in particular has been used successfully to solve crack initiation and propagation problems, multi-material systems, fluid flow with boundary layers, combustion problems, fluid structure interaction, growth of hydrogels and biofilms among others, with minimal meshing and remeshing of the moving boundaries involved.

XFEM 2013 is one of the successful series of ECCOMAS thematic events. XFEM 2013 is a medium-size conference with a balanced participation covering both the theoretical aspects of the subject and engineering applications. A special objective of XFEM 2013 is to expand the themes of the conference to fictitious domain methods in general and especially for comparisons of different methods.

Conference Topics

Over the years, research has refined the initial version of the method and one can identify the following salient topics under particularly intensive study:
  • Solid and Fracture Mechanics,
  • Material and Structural design,
  • Fluid-structure interaction, multi-fluid, free-surface flow,
  • Fictitious Domain Methods,
  • Multiphysics problems,
  • Mathematical aspects: preconditioners, convergence, numerical integration, application of boundary conditions on moving interfaces, blending, a priori/posteriori error estimation,
  • X-FEM Multiscale strategies / multiscale problems,
  • GEM, PUFEM, strong discontinuities and beyond,
  • Combined experimental and numerical XFEM methodologies,
  • Computer implementation aspects.

Call for Papers

Contributors to the field are invited to submit original research contributions in the area of partition of unity enrichment for finite element and related methods.

The deadline for registration and submission of an abstract can be found in the important dates section. Instructions for authors are available here.
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