Description
One of the main approaches for modeling fracture and crack propagation in solid materials is adaptive insertion of cohesive elements, in which line-like (2D) or surface-like (3D) elements are inserted into the finite element mesh to model the nucleation and propagation of failure surfaces. In this approach, however, cracks are forced to propagate along element boundaries, following paths that in general require more energy per unit crack extension (greater driving forces) than those followed in the original continuum. This, in turn, leads to erroneous solutions. In a recent study, two-dimensional conjugate-direction meshes were introduced to alleviate mesh-induced anisotropy and mesh-induced toughness for this kind of problems. We show that conjugate-direction meshes naturally extend to the three-dimensional case while preserving the good features exhibited in lower dimensionality.
Recommended Citation
Rimoli, J., Mota, A., Foulk, J., & Ostien, J. (2014). Conjugate-directions meshes for cohesive element models: the three-dimensional case. In A. Bajaj, P. Zavattieri, M. Koslowski, & T. Siegmund (Eds.). Proceedings of the Society of Engineering Science 51st Annual Technical Meeting, October 1-3, 2014 , West Lafayette: Purdue University Libraries Scholarly Publishing Services, 2014. https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/ses2014/mss/issues/21
Conjugate-directions meshes for cohesive element models: the three-dimensional case
One of the main approaches for modeling fracture and crack propagation in solid materials is adaptive insertion of cohesive elements, in which line-like (2D) or surface-like (3D) elements are inserted into the finite element mesh to model the nucleation and propagation of failure surfaces. In this approach, however, cracks are forced to propagate along element boundaries, following paths that in general require more energy per unit crack extension (greater driving forces) than those followed in the original continuum. This, in turn, leads to erroneous solutions. In a recent study, two-dimensional conjugate-direction meshes were introduced to alleviate mesh-induced anisotropy and mesh-induced toughness for this kind of problems. We show that conjugate-direction meshes naturally extend to the three-dimensional case while preserving the good features exhibited in lower dimensionality.