Interlaminar Fatigue Elements for Crack Growth Based on Virtual Crack Closure Technique

Combining Progressive Nodal Release with the Virtual Crack Closure Technique to Model Fatigue Delamination Growth Without Re-meshing

“…An alternative approach [12] was proposed in which intermediate crack positions, that do not conform to the mesh, are accommodated by allowing the nodes to be released progressively. The approach was implemented via an interface element [12,13] and applied to the simulation of delamination growth in 2D. A similar approach has been implemented in Abaqus/Standard [14] and can be applied to simulate delamination growth in 3D, but is presently limited to quasi-static applications.…”

Aeroelastic design of large wind turbine blades considering damage tolerance

“…, the VCCT was recommended to predict the onset of the disbond. However, the VCCT method has also been applied to geometries with existing cracks as well to predict growth rates .…”

On the robustness of finite element procedures based on Virtual Crack Closure Technique and fail release approach for delamination growth phenomena. Definition and assessment of a novel methodology

“…[6]. Whitcomb [7] was one of the first to introduce the use of the VCCT to determine strain energy release rate distributions for a circular delamination and since then a lot of numerical analyses have been performed by using this technique: many of them dealing with delamination growth initiation [8,9], others with growth evolution [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] and skin-stringer debonding [19][20][21]. In the last years a wide spreading interest has been focused on cohesive elements [22] because, based on both the strength of material formulation for crack initiation and fracture mechanics for crack propagation, they are able to overcome one important limitation of the VCCT: the need to define an initial delamination.…”

“…Therefore, even if more rough in some aspects, the VCCT still continue to attract the attention, due to the simplicity of its theory and to its suitability for implementations in post-processing subroutines. When dealing with propagation phenomena, the VCCT has been often implemented into interface elements [10][11][12][13][14][15] or used in conjunction with a procedure of releasing constraints between the crack faces when energy release rate levels overcome critical values (fail release approach) to simulate the delamination growth [16][17][18][19]. Most of these works were based on the use of meshes orthogonal to the delamination front, alternative approaches were 0266 proposed by Nilsson et al [24] and by De Xie et al [12][13].…”