A Conformal Decomposition Finite Element Method for Material Death

A Conformal Decomposition Finite Element Method (CDFEM) is developed for modeling material death. Material death is used to model the continuous removal of material that exceeds a prescribed temperature. CDFEM allows for the moving front to move through the material without having to conform to the finite element geometry. The method is tested using 2-dimensional simulations of a 1-dimensional problem with an analytical solution. CDFEM is shown to be optimal for the chosen discretization with first order convergence in time and second order convergence in space. In comparison, a traditional element death algorithm does not converge at all on unstructured meshes. A correction is proposed for remedying this problem, resulting in first order convergence for traditional element death in space and time.