Arbitrary branched and intersecting cracks with the eXtended Finite Element Method

Christophe Daux (1) , Nicolas Moës (1) , John Dolbow (1) , Natarajan Sukumar (1) , Ted Belytschko (1)

1 Northwestern University [Evanston]

Extensions of a new technique for the finite element modelling of cracks with multiple branches, multiple holes and cracks emanating from holes are presented. This extended finite element method (X‐FEM) allows the representation of crack discontinuities and voids independently of the mesh. A standard displacement‐based approximation is enriched by incorporating discontinuous fields through a partition of unity method. A methodology that constructs the enriched approximation based on the interaction of the discontinuous geometric features with the mesh is developed. Computation of the stress intensity factors (SIF) in different examples involving branched and intersecting cracks as well as cracks emanating from holes are presented to demonstrate the accuracy and the robustness of the proposed technique.

Mots clés: partition of unity; extended FEM; branched cracks; voids

Domaines: Mécanique des matériaux [physics.class-ph]

Christophe Daux, Nicolas Moës, John Dolbow, Natarajan Sukumar, Ted Belytschko. Arbitrary branched and intersecting cracks with the eXtended Finite Element Method. International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering, 2000, 48 (12), pp.1741-1760. ⟨10.1002/1097-0207(20000830)48:12<1741::AID-NME956>3.0.CO;2-L⟩. ⟨hal-01005274⟩