A time variational method to couple heterogeneous time integrators

Abstract

This paper is devoted to a brief presentation of recent research results upon structural mechanics code coupling in transient analysis. The domain is supposed to be decomposed into a series of sub domains which are treated independently with their own time integration scheme and or their own code. The paper gives a general method which allows to couple these subdomains. The proposed method is rather general and based upon a weak vision of dynamic equilibrium equation. This new vision allows to design a coupling strategy which ensure by design that no energy is introduced or dissipated in the interfaces between the sub domains. The proposed coupling method hence does not perturb the quality of the time integrators of each sub domain. This also allows to develop a general code coupler for transient dynamics. Two examples are given to illustrate the paper.