An extended boundary element method formulation for the direct calculation of the stress intensity factors in fully anisotropic materials

Hattori, G.; Alatawi, I.A.; Trevelyan, J.

Abstract

We propose a formulation for linear elastic fracture mechanics (LEFM) in which the stress intensity factors (SIF) are found directly from the solution vector of an extended boundary element method (XBEM) formulation. The enrichment is embedded in the BEM formulation, rather than adding new degrees of freedom for each enriched node. Therefore, a very limited number of new degrees of freedom is added to the problem, which contributes to preserving the conditioning of the linear system of equations. The Stroh formalism is used to provide BEM fundamental solutions for any degree of anisotropy, and these are used for both conventional and enriched degrees of freedom. Several numerical examples are shown with benchmark solutions to validate the proposed method.

Citation

Hattori, G., Alatawi, I., & Trevelyan, J. (2017). An extended boundary element method formulation for the direct calculation of the stress intensity factors in fully anisotropic materials. International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering, 109(7), 965-981. https://doi.org/10.1002/nme.5311

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: May 31, 2016
• Online Publication Date: Jul 14, 2016
• Publication Date: Feb 17, 2017
• Deposit Date: Jun 2, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 7, 2017
• Journal: International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering
• Print ISSN: 0029-5981
• Electronic ISSN: 1097-0207
• Publisher: Wiley
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 109
• Issue: 7
• Pages: 965-981
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/nme.5311