Simulation of coupled structural-acoustic response with dynamic damage evolution

A novel time-domain method for simulating dynamic damage evolution in a coupled structural-acoustic system is presented. The system is derived via the theory of continuum damage mechanics, and incorporates standard damage evolution models, but is readily extendible to more exotic formulations. The overall solution method is staggered, solving for the dynamic damage evolution first with an explicit step, and then using the new values in the coupled computation of the structural-acoustic system. The spatial domain is discretized using a mixed finite element method, and the temporal domain is discretized with a higher-order implicit time discretization scheme. Efforts toward fully coupled verification of the solution algorithm are presented, as are validation studies for cases without evolving damage. Applications with evolving damage are presented, and present a first principles study of changes in the structural acoustic response to dynamically evolving damage in the structure. Special attention is given t...