Open Access

ARTICLE

Efficient Fracture Analysis of 2D Crack Problems by the MVCCI Method

by

1 Ingenieurbüro für Angewandte Mechanik, Zittau, Germany

Structural Durability & Health Monitoring 2010, 6(3&4), 239-272. https://doi.org/10.3970/sdhm.2010.006.239

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to give an overview to some problems and solutions of the fracture analysis of 2D structures. It will be shown that the common computer-aided two-dimensional fatigue crack path simulation can be considerably improved in accuracy by using a predictor-corrector procedure in combination with the modified virtual crack closure integral (MVCCI) method. Furthermore the paper presents an improved finite element technique for the calculation of stress intensity factors of mixed mode problems by the MVCCI Method. The procedure is devised to compute the separated strain energy release rates by using the convergence of two separate calculations with different element sizes in the neighborhood of the crack tip. In order to evaluate the validity and efficiency of the proposed higher order crack path simulation method, experiments of curved fatigue crack growth are carried out with a specially designed specimen under proportional lateral force bending. In all cases considered, the computationally predicted crack trajectories show an excellent agreement with the curved cracks that are obtained in the experiments. Additionally the procedure has been extended to analyse the crack growth and the plastic limit load for each crack propagation step in a fully automatic simulation. The proposed solution algorithm provides a powerful tool for flaw assessment with the FAD procedure in combination with a numerical crack path simulation. Several numerical examples are presented to show the accuracy and the efficiency of the crack path simulation including the analysis of the plastic limit loads.

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