3D-crack growth simulations with the boundary element method

摘要

An automatic crack growth algorithm is presented to analyze the stable crack propagation for arbitrary three-dimensional problems consideirng linear-elastic material behaviour. The numerical simulation is based on the dual boundary element method (Dual (BEM) and stress intensity factor calcultion. The K-values along the crack front are evaluated very accurately from the numerical field of stresses by a special extrapolation algorithm controlled by the correlation coefficient. Several crack growth criteria have been implemented. For both problems with embedded cracks and problems with surface breaking cracks, the numerical model for the next step of the simulation is created in a fully automatic procedure. To illustrate the realized 3D-crack growth algorithm, numerical examples are shown and compared with experimental results.