Crack propagation in quasi-brittle materials by fourth-order phase-field cohesive zone model

Abstract

A phase-field approach becomes a more popular candidate in modeling crack propagation. It uses a scalar auxiliary variable, namely a phase-field variable, to model a discontinuity zone in a continuity domain. Furthermore, the fourth-order phase-field approach produces a better convergence rate and more accurate solutions than the second-order one. However, it is available for modeling crack propagation in brittle material. This study addresses the fourth-order phase-field model combining the non-standard phase-field form with a cohesive zone model (CZM) to predict crack propagation in quasi-brittle material. A Cornelisson's softening law is used to capture the high precision of crack propagation prediction. The concrete material is considered as a quasi-brittle one. For computation efficiency using NURBS-based finite elements, Virtual Uncommon-Knot-Inserted Master-Slave (VUKIMS) technique is employed to derive a local refinement mesh. Numerical results are verified by the published ones from literature. It was found that the peak load and crack path are independent of the element size and insensitive to the length-scale number using the fourth-order phase-field CZM. Our proposed model shows the most significant advantage compared to the standard phase-field approach in terms of computational cost and solution accuracy.

Strain-based running-reliability characterisation in time-domain for risk monitoring under various load conditions

“…Recent study involved identifying the stiffness condition on a structure, investigating a polygonal finite element on a steady fluid problem, and predicting a hardness for low carbon steel of a component [4][5][6]. In addition to that, analysis of finite element-based is implemented in predicting a crack propagation of quasi-brittle material and optimising a buckling of porous microplates material [7,8].…”

Modeling fracture in brittle materials by higher-order phase field method using C1 non-Sibsonian interpolants

“…Nguyen et al . (2022) proposed fourth-order PF-CZM in quasi-brittle material using Cornelisson's softening law for accurate prediction of crack propagation.…”

Experimental and numerical investigations of crack growth of hot-rolled steel Q420C using cohesive zone model

“…Up to now, great efforts have been devoted to coming up with fatigue crack growth simulation models. Among all of them, the extended finite element method (XFEM) [2][3][4] and the cyclic cohesive zone model (CCZM) [5][6][7][8][9][10][11] are the most widely used ones. XFEM modifies the element's shape function to consider discontinuity, particularly suitable for the analysis of static or dynamic crack growth; meanwhile, it does not require pre-defining crack paths, which facilitates the analysis of crack growth with changing directions.…”