FINITE ELEMENTS IN FRACTURE MECHANICS Numerical methods for fracture mechanics can be categorized in many different ways such as :

1. Those in which the singularity is modelled, that is the stress field at the tip of the crack is properly represented. 2. Techniques in which the SIF are directly evaluated as part of the augmented global stiffness matrix. 3. Techniques through which the SIF can be computed a post priori following a standard finite element analysis via a special purpose post-processor.

Review of Isoparametric Finite Elements

In the isoparametric finite element representation, both the internal displacement and coordinates are related to their nodal values through the shape functions:

Figure

: Isoparametric Quadratic Finite Element: Global and Parent Element

where the Ni are the assumed shape functions.

The shape functions are obtained by mere inspection (i.e. serependitiously),

To obtain the strains, the displacements are differentiated with respect to x and y. Displacement is defined in terms of the natural coordinates and . Thus the chain
rule will have to be invoked and the inverse of the jacobian will be needed. The jacobian matrix is:

The inverse jacobian is then evaluated from:

The strain displacement relationship is:

where [Bi] is the strain matrix given by:

where the following chain rule is invoked to determine the coefficients of [B]:

Finally, it can be shown that the element stiffness matrix of an element is given by

where the natural coordinates and are shown in fig: ( constitutive matrix. The stress is given by:

) and [D] is the stress-strain or

How to Distort the Element to Model the Singularity

In Eq. ( ), if the stresses are to be singular, then [B] has to be singular as the two other components are constants. Consequently, if [B] is to be singular then the determinant of J must vanish to zero (Eq. ) at the crack tip. Now considering a rectangular element of length L along its first side (1-5-2, in Fig. ),we can readily see that both off-diagonal terms in J (Eq. ) are zero. Thus, for the determinant of the jacobian to be zero we to be zero. at = 1 we have:

must have either one of the diagonal terms equal to zero. It will suffice to force Making the proper substitution for

After simplification, and considering the first corner node (where = = 1), we would have:

Thus all the terms in the jacobian vanish if and only if the second node is located at instead of , and subsequently both the stresses and strains at the first node will become singular . Thus singularity at the crack tip is achieved by shifting the mid-side node to its quarter-point position, see Fig. ( ) We should observe that instead of enforcing along edge 1-2 to

vanish at the crack tip, we could have enforced along edge 1-7 to be zero at the crack tip. A similar approach will show that if node 8 is shifted to its quarter-point position the same radial strain variation would be obtained along sides 1-4. However, along rays within the element emanating from node 1 the strain variation is not singular. The next section will discuss this issue and other variation of this distorted element in more detail.

Figure ( ): Singular Element (Quarter-Point Quadratic Isoparametric Element)

Order of Singularity
Having shown that the stresses at the first node are singular, the obvious question is what is the degree of singularity. First let us solve for in terms of x and L at = 1 (that is, alongside 1-5-2):

Recalling that in isoparametric elements the displacement field along = 1 is given by:

we can rewrite Eq. (

) by replacing with the previously derived expression, Eq. (

):

This complex equation can be rewritten in the form:

We thus note that the displacement field has had its quadratic term replaced by which means that when the derivative of the displacement is taken, the strain (and stresses) are of the form:

Thus the strength of the singularity is of order just as we wanted it to be for linear elastic fracture mechanics .

Stress Intensity Factors Extraction

A number of techniques can be used to determine the SIF

EXTRACTION OF SIF 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Displacement correlation method Displacement extrapolation method Strain energy release rate method Vertical crack extension (VCE) J-integral