Cube mounting simulation

Dear all,

I would like to simulate the attachment of of cube into a glue pad, where the cube is solid while the glue shows viscoelastic behavior (power law model). In reality I only can define the attachment force and the time it is active (force with which the cube is pressed into the glue). What I want to know is if there is enough glue left under the cube when the force quits. The situation is shown schematically in the attached figure.
I have only little experience in CFD, but I think it should be possible to do this with CodeSaturne or Openfoam.
Would these programs be suitable for that kind of problem (slow laminar flow, high viscosity)? Are there any examples or tutorials available that would cover this problem?
Any advise would be helpful!

BR WuZi

Hi. This is not my area of expertise, as I'm much more customed to typical near-ideal flows, but given the fact that Re numbers are really low due to the high viscosity and almost null speeds, and also that deformation is quite constrained due to the surface tension, I dare to say you have a case which is better simulated as a solid under deformation in the plasticity zone rather than as a fluid. Think about forging for example, this is comparable.
Simulating surface tension is going to be hard with normal CFD, and in Code_Saturne for what I've seen might be even harder, unless you do some sort of fluid-structure coupling. But again, Code_Aster and Impact already have routines which deal with nonlinear plastic deformation of solids, and you will very probably need less tweaking with this softs than with CFD.

Dear CAVT,

thank you for your response. The proposed direction seems to me quite attractive, especially since I feel a little bit more comfortable with "non"-CFD simulations.... Do you have any proposal on the material model which is to be preferred for the plastics deformation aproach with the viscous material I wan to apply?

Regards, WuZi

I'm afraid my knowledge falls short in this case, I don't have experience with plastic materials in FEM. If it helps, I once attended a demonstration of Abaqus where they showed a simulation of a train impacting a fuel-transport truck. They simulated the fuel not with CFD, but as a very plastic material, and they said the results were more than acceptable (anyway, they were trying to sell a product, so it's logical they'll speak well about it, lol).
The best advise I can think of now is to check Code_Aster documentations and tutorials, as well as Impact's. I think the wiki has some good info too, and of course the dedicated forums, they'll answer you much better than me.
Anyway, the material you should load I guess must have a stress-strain curve resembling aluminum, I think that's a good start point, and be sure to allow strains larger than 100%, so to allow for very large deformations without obtaining fracture.