Direct Computation of 3-D Stress Intensity Factors of Straight and Curved Planar Cracks with the P-Version Finite Element Method and Contour Integral Method

Abstract

This paper presents direct computations of 3-D fracture parameters including stress intensity factors (SIFs) and T-stress for straight and curved planar cracks with the p-version finite element method (P-FEM) and contour integral method (CIM). No excessive singular element or enrichment function is required for the computation. To demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed approaches, several benchmark numerical models of 3-D planar straight and curved cracks with single and mixed-mode fractures are considered and analyzed: a through thickness edge straight crack in a homogeneous material, a through thickness inclined straight crack, a penny-shaped crack embedded in a cube and a central ellipse shaped crack in a homogeneous cube. Numerical results are analyzed and compared with analytical solutions and those reported by the extended finite element method (XFEM) and the scaled boundary finite element method (SBFEM) in the available literature. Numerical experiments show the accuracy, robustness and effectiveness of the present method.

Direct Evaluation of the Stress Intensity Factors for the Single and Multiple Crack Problems Using the P-Version Finite Element Method and Contour Integral Method

“…In the past few decades, the P-FEM and the CIM have been applied to extract the SIFs of the materials and structures, but most of the research is to use separately the P-FEM or using traditional low-order FEM and the CIM or the CIM in combination with other methods such as the displacement discontinuity method [9]. Currently, there are a few works for the P-FEM combined with the CIM to extract SIFs [10,11].…”