A COMPARATIVE STUDY ON 2D CRACK MODELLING USING EXTENDED FINITE ELEMENT METHOD

Abstract

In this study the Extended Finite Element Method (XFEM) was used for modelling 2D cracks in plane and plate problems. The aim was to investigate the significance of the crack Tip functions in the nodal enrichment procedure.  A new set of Tip functions were extracted from analytical solutions of Kirchhoff plates and various nodal enrichment schemes were examined for plane and plate elements. The stress intensity factors (SIF) for typical benchmark problems were calculated using the J-Integral and the Interaction Integral methods. The results indicated that elimination of the Tip functions had no noticeable effect on the accuracy of the computed stress intensity factors for the plane problems.  However, the precision of the computed values for the plate problems were quite affected by this procedure. Moreover, the Interaction Integral method was found to be more efficient for the computation of crack parameters in such problems.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.mech.19.4.5043