Exact extraction of stress intensity factors via enriched numerical manifold method with composite patches.

Abstract

Stress intensity factors (SIFs) determine whether cracks propagate and play vital role in the simulation of crack propagation. Therefore, the computation of SIFs is an important prerequisite for analysis of crack evolution via numerical methods. Nowadays, J-integral method widely is employed to obtain SIFs. However, it has a significant error in calculation of SIFs when the crack tips are close to the geometrical boundaries or the two crack tips are close to each other. Therefore, Numerical Manifold Method with Composite patches is proposed to obtain exact the value of SIFs. Then numerical examples are used to verify the proposed method. The compare of results from the proposed method and J-integral method demonstrate numerical manifold method with Composite patches can exactly extract SIFs.