eXtended Stochastic Finite Element Method for the numerical simulation of heterogeneous materials with random material interfaces

An eXtended Stochastic Finite Element Method has been recently proposed for the numerical solution of partial differential equations defined on random domains. This method is based on a marriage between the eXtended Finite Element Method and spectral stochastic methods. In this article, we propose an extension of this method for the numerical simulation of random multi-phased materials. The random geometry of material interfaces is described implicitly by using random level set functions. A fixed deterministic finite element mesh, which is not conforming to the random interfaces, is then introduced in order to approximate the geometry and the solution. Classical spectral stochastic finite element approximation spaces are not able to capture the irregularities of the solution field with respect to spatial and stochastic variables, which leads to a deterioration of the accuracy and convergence properties of the approximate solution. In order to recover optimal convergence properties of the approximation, we propose an extension of the partition of unity method to the spectral stochastic framework. This technique allows the enrichment of approximation spaces with suitable functions based on an a priori knowledge of the irregularities in the solution. Numerical examples illustrate the efficiency of the proposed method and demonstrate the relevance of the enrichment procedure. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.