Acta Mech 225, 299–307 (2014)

DOI 10.1007/s00707-013-0961-8

Pan Guo · Wen-Hua Wu · Zhi-Gang Wu

A time discontinuous Galerkin finite element method

for generalized thermo-elastic wave analysis,
considering non-Fourier effects

Received: 10 March 2013 / Revised: 3 July 2013 / Published online: 3 September 2013
© Springer-Verlag Wien 2013

Abstract Generalized thermo-elastic theory, which is based on the non-Fourier theory, indicates that there is
a time delay between the heat flux vector and the temperature gradient. At present, the traditional numerical
method for solving the thermo-elastic problem subjected to high-frequency heat source generally fails to
properly capture discontinuities of impulsive waves in space and produces spurious numerical oscillations in
the simulation of high modes and sharp gradients. In the paper, a time discontinuous Galerkin finite element
method (DGFEM) for the solution of generalized thermo-elastic coupled problems is presented on the basis
of well-known Lord–Shulman theory. The essential feature of the DGFEM is that the general temperature-
displacement vector and its temporal gradient are assumed to be discontinuous and interpolated individually
at each time level in time domain, respectively. In order to filter out the spurious wave-front oscillations, an
artificial damping scheme is implemented in the final finite element formula. Numerical results show that the
present DGFEM shows good abilities and provides much more accurate solutions for generalized thermo-
elastic coupled behavior. It can capture the discontinuities effectively at the wave front and filter out the effects
of spurious numerical oscillation induced by a high-frequency thermal shock.

1 Introduction

Thermo-mechanical interactions are an important reason for the failure of many structures. Heat action, espe-
cially heat shock, can cause the temperature rise and considerable stresses in solids. Recently, heat wave
behavior attracted significant attentions in many engineering applications, such as nuclear engineering and
laser processing. In order to better explain thermal wave disturbance in solids, a hyperbolic heat conduction
equation which is based on non-Fourier theories was developed and applied for short pulse load interval.
Physically, non-Fourier thermal transport process supposes that there exists a certain time delay for heat flux
to the temperature gradient [1].
In 1967, Lord and Shulman [2] obtained the wave-type thermal-mechanical equations by postulating a
new heat conductive law to replace the classical Fourier’s one. The new law contains the heat flux vector as
well as its time derivative. It contains a new constant that acts as a relaxation time. Green and Lindsay (1972)

P. Guo · W.-H. Wu (B)

The State Key Laboratory for Structural Analysis of Industrial Equipment,
Department of Engineering Mechanics, Faculty of Vehicle Engineering and Mechanics,
Dalian University of Technology, 116024 Dalian, China
E-mail: lxyuhua@dlut.edu.cn
Tel.: +86-411-8470-6147

Z.-G. Wu
The State Key Laboratory for Structural Analysis of Industrial Equipment,
School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Faculty of Vehicle Engineering and Mechanics,
Dalian University of Technology, 116024 Dalian, China
300 P. Guo et al.

presented their model containing two constants that act as relaxation times and by modifying all the equations
of the coupled theory [3,4]. These two generalized thermo-elastic theories have been successfully applied to
explore the thermal shock problem [5–8].
Till now, most applied thermo-elastic problems can be solved by employing numerical methods, such as
finite element method (FEM) [9], boundary element method (BEM) [10], or mesh-free methods. Prevost and
Tao (1983) proposed an implicit–explicit algorithm adapted from the Newmark structural method to analyze
dynamic thermo-elastic problems based on Green and Lindsay’s (1972) model [9]. Tamma et al. [11–13]
present an overview of the dynamic thermo-elastic models together with the finite element computational
schemes. They devoted their efforts to solve the thermal-mechanical problem subjected to impulse heat load.
Among them, the “γ -family” method with three coefficients was present to filter out the effects of spurious
high modes. But the coefficients need to be adjusted case by case to stabilize the solution procedure and to
control the spurious oscillations for the non-classical problems.
In 2003, Li et al. presented a novel time discontinuous Galerkin finite element method (DGFEM) for
solving dynamics and wave propagation in nonlinear solids and saturated porous media [14]. Wu and Li [15]
present a DGFEM to simulate the heat wave propagation problem with success. The present DG method
shows better performance in numerical simulation of heat wave propagation in eliminating spurious numerical
oscillations and in providing more accurate solutions than those of the traditional time integration method
(such as Newmark method) in the time domain.
In this paper, the new version of time discontinuous Galerkin finite element method is present to describe
the generalized thermo-elastic problem. The finite element equations are derived within the framework of
the Lord–Shulman (L–S) theory. Temperature and displacements in solid phase together with their tempo-
ral derivative are treated as the basic variables. The essential feature of the propose method are its P1–P3
interpolation approximations, i.e., the primary variables (the temperature in heat transfer problem and dis-
placement vector in solid phase) and their temporal derivative are approximately interpolated by the Hermite
and the linear interpolation functions in time domain, respectively. In comparison with the traditional contin-
uous Galerkin finite element method (CGFEM), such as Newmark method or central difference method, to
solve the time-dependent dynamic problems, the primary unknown variables and their temporal derivatives
in DGFEM are assumed to be discontinuous at each of discrete-time instants. Such relaxation of restrictions
on continuity of the primary variable and its temporal derivative provides a mechanism to filter out the spuri-
ous oscillations in wave-after stage. In order to reduce the numerical oscillations appearing in the wave-front
stage, a stiffness proportional artificial damping scheme is brought into the final finite element discretized
form.
Numerical results demonstrate clearly that the present DGFEM is valid to filter out the spurious oscillations
and provides much more accurate solutions than using CGFEM (Newmark method) with the same time step
size for the generalized thermo-elastic coupled problem subjected to a thermal shock.

2 Basic governing equations of Lord–Shulman (L–S) theory

The governing equations of generalized thermo-elasticity (the L–S theory) are summarized in this section. The
basic thermal elastic coupled governing equations can be expressed as [3,4]
 
∂2T ∂T ∂U ∂ 2U
ρcτ0 2 + ρc − T0 βdiv + τ0 2 − K T = QT , (1.1)
∂t ∂t ∂t ∂t
∂ 2U
ρ 2 − β∇T − μU − (λ + μ)∇divU = QU (1.2)
∂t
where T is the temperature, U the displacement vector, t the time, λ, μ the Lamé constants, ρ the density, c the
specific heat at constant strain, β = α(3λ + 2μ), α the coefficient of linear thermal expansion, K the thermal
conductivity, T0 reference temperature. QU is the force vector in the displacement field, QT is heat source,
and τ0 is the thermal relaxation time. When τ0 = 0, Eqs. (1.1, 1.2) would reduce to the classical coupled
thermo-elastic theory.
We define the corresponding dimensionless terms as

U T −T x t QT QU
u= , θ= , x∗ = , t∗ = , fθ∗ = T , fU∗ = U (2)
U T x t Q Q
A time discontinuous Galerkin finite element method 301

where
K K K
U = √ , T = T0 , x = √ , t= ,
c ρ(λ + 2μ) c ρ(λ + 2μ) c(λ + 2μ)
T T0 ρc2 (λ + 2μ) U ρc(λ + 2μ)2
Q = , Q = √ .
K K ρ(λ + 2μ)
Substituting Eqs. (2) into Eqs. (1.1, 1.2), the final dimensionless form of the thermo-elastic governing equations
is obtained as
 
∂ 2θ ∂θ ∂u ∂ 2u
τ 2 + − adiv + τ 2 − θ = f θ , (3.1)
∂t ∂t ∂t ∂t
∂ 2u
− β1 ∇θ − u − ∇divu = f u (3.2)
∂t 2
βT0 β
where τ = τ0 c(λ+2μ)
K , β1 = λ+2μ , a = ρc .
It should be noted that the appropriate boundary conditions associated with the governing Eqs. (3.1,
3.2) must be adopted. When the temperature and displacements are prescribed on the surfaces Γθ 1 and Γu1 ,
respectively, one has

θ = θ0 (t) on Γθ 1 , (4.1)
u = u0 (t) on Γu1 (4.2)

where θ0 and u0 are the prescribed values of temperature and displacement vector.
On the other hand, if the surface heat flux and surface traction are applied to the corresponding surface Γθ 2
and Γu2 , the following boundary conditions should be satisfied:

Fθ = Fbθ (t) on Γθ 2 , (4.3)

Fu = Fbu (t) on Γu2 (4.4)

where Fbθ (t) and Fbu (t) are the given surface heat flux and surface traction, respectively.
In the present paper, the surface impulse heat source is applied and proposed with the form as:

θ q0 n, t ∈ [0, t0 ]
Fb (t) = on Γθ 2 (5)
0, t > t0

where q0 , t0 are the amplitude of thermal shock and the constant time.

3 Numerical technique and discontinuous Galerkin finite element method (DGFEM) in time domain

3.1 Finite element discretization

The finite element equations corresponding to Eqs. (3.1, 3.2) can be expanded and expressed in standard
Galerkin discretized form as:
          
Mθθ Mθu θ̈ + Cθθ Cθu θ̇ + Kθθ 0 θ = Fθ (6)
0 M uu ü 0 0 u̇ K u θ K uu u Fu

where
 
Mθθ = τ Nθ Nθ dΩ, Mθu = τ a Nθ Bu dΩ,
Ω Ω
 
Muu = Nu Nu dΩ, Cθu = β1 Nθ Bu dΩ,
Ω Ω
302 P. Guo et al.

 
Cθθ = Nθ Nθ dΩ, Kθθ = Bθ Bθ dΩ,
Ω Ω
 
uθ
K = a Bu Nθ dΩ, K uu
= Bu Bu dΩ,
Ω Ω
 
Fθ = Nθ f θ dΩ, Fu = Nu f u dΩ,
Ω Ω

in which Nθ , Nu are the shape functions for the temperature and displacement, respectively. And Bθ , Bu are
the first-order spatial derivatives
 of the shape functions.

We define {U} = θ as the basic variable, U̇ and Ü are the first-order and second-order temporal
u
derivative of the basic variables.

3.2 Discontinuous Galerkin finite element method in time domain

The final matrix form of the general thermo-elastic theory can be rewritten as

[M] Ü + [C] U̇ + [K] {U} = {F} , t ∈ I = (0, T ) (7)

where
       
Mθθ Mθu Cθθ Cθu Kθθ 0 Fθ
[M] = , [C] = , [K] = , {F} = . (8)
0 Muu 0 0 Kuθ Kuu Fu
Compared to the traditional time domain integral method, such as Newmark method, DGFEM permits the
discontinuity of functions at a discrete-time sequence, 0 < · · · < tn < · · · < t N . For a typical time instant tn ,
the temporal jump of the functions can be expressed as
[[Un ]] = U(tn+ ) − U(tn− ) (9)
where U(tn+ ), U(tn− ) are discontinuities of functions at tn , where w(tn± ) = lim (w + ε).
ε→0±
−
Denoting In = (tn+ , tn+1 ) a typical incremental time step with the step size t = tn+1 − tn , the primary
unknown
 vector
 (the global nodal temperature-displacements vector) of the semidiscretized Eq. (7) at time
t ∈ tn, tn+1 in the current time step In is interpolated by using the third-order Hermite (P3) time shape
functions as
− −
U (t) = Un+ N1 (t) + Un+1 N2 (t) + vn+ M1 (t) + vn+1 M2 (t) (10)
− −
where Un+ , Un+1 , vn+ , vn+1 stand for the global nodal values of temperature-displacements vector and its time
derivative at times tn , tn+1 , respectively.
− −
For clarity, Eq. (10) is rewritten with the omission of the superscripts of the vectors Un+ , Un+1 , vn+ , vn+1
and the time variable t in the equation as:
U = Un N1 + Un+1 N2 + vn M1 + vn+1 M2 . (11)
It is assumed for the current time step that the global nodal values of temperature-displacements vector and its
time derivative, i.e., Un− , vn− at time tn− have been determined at the end of the previous time step. The Hermite
(P3) interpolation functions used in Eq. (11) are given as
N1 = N1 (t) = λ21 (λ1 + 3λ2 ) , N2 = N2 (t) = λ22 (λ2 + 3λ1 ) , (12)
M1 = M1 (t) = λ21 λ2 t, M2 = M2 (t) = −λ1 λ22 t,
tn+1 −t
where λ1 = t , λ2= t−ttn .
The
 global  nodal values vn of the temporal derivative of temperature-displacements vector at arbitrary time
t ∈ tn , tn+1 is interpolated as an independent variable by linear (P1) time shape functions as
−
v (t) = vn+ λ1 (t) + vn+1 λ2 (t)
or simply expressed as
A time discontinuous Galerkin finite element method 303

v = vn λ1 + vn+1 λ2 . (13)
The generalized thermo-elastic weak forms of the semi-discretized Eq. (7) and the constraint condition
U̇−v = 0, along with the discontinuity conditions U and v on a typical time sub-domain, can be expressed as
 
δv T (Mv̇ + Cv + KU − F)dt + δUT K(U̇ − v)dt + δUnT K [[Un ]] + δvnT M [[vn ]] = 0. (14)
In In

Substituting Eqs. (11) and (13) into Eq. (14), we obtain the following matrix equation of DGFEM for solving
from independent variations of δUn , δUn+1 , δvn , δvn+1 :
Un+ = Un− , (15)
   e 
M + t t2
6 C − 12 K − t t2
6 C − 12 K vn F1 − F2e + Mv−n
= , (16)
t t2
M + t t2 vn+1 F1e + F2e + Mv− −
n − tKUn
2 C+ 3 K 2 C+ 6 K
+ 1
Un+1 = Un− + t (vn + vn+1 ) (17)
2
where F1e = t e t e e t e t e
3 Fn + 6 Fn+1 , F2 = 6 Fn + 3 Fn+1 .
The above formula means that the continuity of nodal temperature-displacement vector {U} at any time
level is automatically ensured. The discontinuity is located at nodal derivative vector {v} at discretized time
levels.

3.3 Artificial damping scheme for DGFEM

As indicated in Refs. [16,17], the selection of a stiffness proportional and mass proportional damping coefficient
are effective for high-frequency oscillations and low-frequency oscillations, respectively. In order to filter out
the oscillations existing in wave-front stage caused by high-frequency impulse load, an artificial stiffness
proportional Rayleigh-type damping scheme is introduced with the form as below:
Ca = βc K, (18)
βc = 2ξ/ωn (19)
where Ca is the stiffness proportional matrix, βc the damping constant, ξ the damping ratio estimated from the
global behavior of the system, and Ωn the basic frequency of the considered structure. As a result of a number
of trial runs, it could be also determined that effective stiffness proportional damping constant βc should be
less than or equal to the time step.
Substituting the stiffness proportional artificial damping matrix Eq. (18) into Eq. (16), we can obtain
   e 
e + Mv−
M + t C w − t2
K − t
Cw − t2
K v n F 1 − F 2 n
6 12 6 12
= (20)
t
Cw + t K
2
M + t Cw + t K
2 vn+1 F1e + F2e + Mv−n − tKUn
−
2 3 2 6
where Cw = Ca + C is the global damping term.
Equations (15), (20), and (17) form the final expressions for the present DGFEM.

4 Numerical results and discussion

In this section, two examples are presented to demonstrate the good performance of the proposed DGFEM
formulations in modeling the generalized thermo-elastic wave problems subjected to impulse heat load.

4.1 1-D thermo-elastic wave propagation problem

At first, we consider a 1D thermo-elastic wave propagation problem with dimensionless length of L = 0.15,
as shown in Fig. 1. The configuration with one end fixed and one end heat loaded by a thermal impulse Fθ
is analyzed and depicted in Fig. 1. The heat impulse Fθ is applied at the left end of the configuration and
expressed by
304 P. Guo et al.

Fθ X

Fig. 1 A uniform thermo-elastic configuration with one end fixed, subjected to a rectangular impulse heat load applied to the
other end

Fig. 2 Temperature profiles at t = 0.01 and t = 0.02 between DGFEM (with and without damping term) and Newmark method

Fig. 3 Stress profiles at t = 0.01 and t = 0.02 between DGFEM (with and without damping term) and Newmark method

  
θ 100 t ∈ 0, 5 × 10−3
F = . (21)
0 t > 5 × 10−3

The dimensionless material property data are defined as follows: β1 = 5.035 × 10−3 , a = 0.926, τ = 0.1
[10]. Time step size t = 1.0 × 10−3 and artificial damping constant βc = 1.27 × 10−4 are used.
The initial and boundary conditions are specified as follows:
T (x, 0) = 0, Ṫ (x, 0) = 0,
ic.
U (x, 0) = 0, U̇ (x, 0) = 0,
bc. T (L , t) = 0, U (L , t) = 0.
A time discontinuous Galerkin finite element method 305

-4
x 10
2

-2

-4

-6

Stress -8

-10

-12
Newmark t=0.01
-14 Newmark t=0.02
DGFEM t= 0.01 (w/o Damping)
-16 DGFEM t=0.02 (w/o Damping)
DGFEM t=0.01 (with damping)

-18 DGFEM t=0.02 (with damping)

0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035 0.04

L
Fig. 4 Partial enlarged effects of stress profiles of Fig. 3 between DGFEM (with and without (w/o) damping term) and Newmark
method

Fig. 5 Mesh, geometry and boundary conditions of two dimensional model

Figures 2 and 3 illustrate the temperature and stress distributions obtained at two time levels of t = 0.01
and t = 0.02 by DGFEM and Newmark method, respectively. The results obtained by the DGFEM without
damping term are also given in the same figures (dashed lines and labeled with ‘DGFEM w/o damping’).
Figure 4 presents the partial enlarged drawing for stress profile at circle “A” in Fig. 3. It is obvious that serious
numerical oscillations of DGFEM without damping term and Newmark method appear in the results shown
in Fig. 4, which are clearly unacceptable. The good performance and accuracy of the proposed DGFEM over
Newmark method are obviously observed. DGFEM is valid to filter out the spurious numerical oscillations
and provides much more accurate solutions for the generalized thermo-elastic coupled problem subjected to a
thermal impulse load.

4.2 2-D thermo-elastic wave propagation problem

The objective of the second example is to show the applicability of the proposed DGFEM to the thermal wave
propagation problem in a deformable elastic medium in 2D case. A square domain with 25 × 25 four-node
finite elements is subjected to a thermal impulse load at the top left corner ‘A’ depicted in Fig. 5. Geometry and
boundary conditions are also given in the figure. The example is analyzed as a plane strain problem. According
to [18], the dimensionless material parameters are taken in the form as below: β1 = 5.035 × 10−3 , βc =
306 P. Guo et al.

1.27 × 10−4 , a = 0.926, τ = 0.1. The loading history of the impulse thermal source is the same as in the first
example. The time step is chosen as t = 1.0 × 10−3 .
Figures 6 and 7 show the temperature and the stress distributions within the domain at time t =
0.01, 0.02, 0.03, obtained by the proposed DGFEM and Newmark method. It should be remarked that due to
incapability of filtering out the effect of the high modes, the spurious numerical oscillation occurring at the
free end after the wave tail passes in the numerical solution by the Newmark method results in a spurious
further development of temperature and stress. Nevertheless, the silent nature at the neighborhood of point A

(a1) (a2) (a3)

(b1) (b2) (b3)

Fig. 6 Comparison of temperature distributions between Newmark and DGFEM. a1 Newmark method at t = 0.01, b1 DGFEM
at t = 0.01, a2 Newmark method at t = 0.02, b2 DGFEM at t = 0.02, a3 Newmark method at t = 0.03, b3 DGFEM at t = 0.03

(a1) (a2) (a3)

(b1) (b2) (b3)

Fig. 7 Comparison of displacement profiles between Newmark method and DGFEM. a1 Newmark method at t = 0.01,
b1 DGFEM at t = 0.01, a2 Newmark method at t = 0.02, b2 DGFEM at t = 0.02, a3 Newmark method at t = 0.03, b3
DGFEM at t = 0.03
A time discontinuous Galerkin finite element method 307

in Fig. 5, where the impulse load is applied, in the present example should agree with traveling waves going
ahead due to the characteristic of the impulse load. The results, as shown in Figs. 6 and 7, demonstrate the good
performance of the proposed DG method in reproducing the silent nature at the zone near the place where the
impulse load is applied, as the resulting traveling waves go ahead, while the Newmark method fails to do so.

5 Conclusions

In this paper, a DGFEM with artificial damping scheme is presented to simulate the generalized non-Fourier
thermo-elastic theory subjected to a high-frequency impact heat source. The main distinct characteristic of
the proposed DGFEM formulations are the specific P3–P1 interpolation approximations, which use piecewise
cubic and linear interpolations for both generalized nodal degrees and their derivatives in the time domain,
respectively. The coefficient in the damping term is defined as the combination of basic frequency and damp-
ing ratio without any manual adjustment. In comparison with traditional time-stepping algorithms, such as
Newmark γ family algorithm, the present DGFEM can filter out the spurious numerical oscillations both in
the wave-front and wave-after stage successfully. The good performance illustrated in numerical examples
demonstrates that it may serve as a viable method for the heat-impact-induced thermo-elastic problem.

Acknowledgments The authors are pleased to acknowledge the support of this work by the “the Fundamental Research Funds
for the Central Universities DUT13ZD208” and the National Key Basic Research and Development Program through contract
Grant numbers: 2011CB013705 and 2011ZX05026-002-02.

References

1. Biot, M.: Thermoelasticity and irreversible thermo-dynamics. J. Appl. Phys. 27, 240–253 (1956)
2. Lord, H., Shulman, Y.: A generalized dynamical theory of thermo-elasticity. J. Mech. Phys. Solids 15, 299–309 (1967)
3. Green, A.E., Lindsay, K.E.: Thermoelasticity. J. Elast. 2, 1–7 (1972)
4. Green, A.E., Naghdi, P.M.: Thermoelasticity without energy dissipation. J. Elast. 31, 189–208 (1993)
5. Zamani, A., Hetnarski, R.B., Eslami, M.R.: Second sound in a cracked layer based on Lord–Shulman theory. J. Therm.
Stress. 34, 181–200 (2011)
6. Wang, Y.Z., Zhang, X.B, Song, X.N.: A unified generalized thermoelasticity solution for the transient thermal shock
problem. Acta Mech. 223, 735–743 (2012)
7. Bagri, A., Eslami, M.R.: Generalized coupled thermoelasticity of disks based on the Lord–Shulman model. J. Therm.
Stress. 27, 691–704 (2004)
8. Kumar, R., Devi, S.: Thermomechanical deformation in porous generalized thermoelastic body with variable material
properties. Struct. Eng. Mech. 34, 285–300 (2010)
9. Prevost, J.H., Tao, D.: Finite element analysis of dynamic coupled thermoelasticity problems with relaxation times. J. Appl.
Mech. 50, 817–822 (1983)
10. Hosseini, T.P., Eslami, M.R.: Boundary element analysis of finite domains under thermal and mechanical shock with the
Lord–Shulman theory. J. Strain Anal. Eng. 38, 53–64 (2003)
11. Tamma, K.K., Namburu, R.R.: Computational approaches with applications to nonclassical and classical thermo-mechanical
problems. Appl. Mech. Rev. 50, 514–551 (1997)
12. Tamma, K.K., Zhou, X., Sha, D.S.: Transient algorithms for heat transfer: general developments and approaches for theoret-
ically generating Nth-order time-accurate operators including practically useful second-order forms. Int. J. Numer. Method
Eng. 44, 1545–1572 (1999)
13. Tamma, K.K., Zhou, X.,Valasutean, R.: Computational algorithms for transient analysis: the burden of weight and conse-
quences towards formalizing discrete numerically assigned [DNA] algorithmic markers: wp-family. Comput. Meth. Appl.
Mech. Eng. 149, 153–188 (1997)
14. Li, X.K., Yao, D.M.: Time discontinuous Galerkin finite element method for dynamic analyses in saturated poro-elasto-plastic
medium. Acta Mech Sinca 20, 64–75 (2004)
15. Wu, W.H., Li, X.K.: Application of the time discontinuous Galerkin finite element method to heat wave simulation. Int. J.
Heat Mass Transf. 49, 1679–1684 (2006)
16. Du, X.L., Wang, J.T.: An explicit difference formulation of dynamic response calculation of the elastic structure with
damping. Eng. Mech. 17, 37–43 (2000)
17. Izuru, T., Mitsuru, N.: Stiffness-damping simultaneous identification using limited earthquake records. Earthq. Eng. Struct.
Dyn. 29, 1219–1238 (2000)
18. Strunin, D.V., Melnik, R.V., Roberts, A.J.: Coupled thermo-mechanical waves in hyperbolic thermo-elasticity. J. Therm.
Stress. 24, 121–140 (2001)