Vertex Displacement-Based Discontinuous Deformation Analysis Using Virtual Element Method

To avoid disadvantages caused by rotational degrees of freedom in the original Discontinuous Deformation Analysis (DDA), a new block displacement mode is defined within a time step, where displacements of all the block vertices are taken as the degrees of freedom. An individual virtual element space V(1)(Ω) is defined for a block to illustrate displacement of the block using the Virtual Element Method (VEM). Based on VEM theory, the total potential energy of the block system in DDA is formulated and minimized to obtain the global equilibrium equations. At the end of a time step, the vertex coordinates are updated by adding their incremental displacement to their previous coordinates. In the new method, no explicit expression for the displacement u is required, and all numerical integrations can be easily computed. Four numerical examples originally designed by Shi are analyzed, verifying the effectiveness and precision of the proposed method.