DUAL BOUNDARY ELEMENT INCREMENTAL-ANALYSIS OF CRACK-PROPAGATION

This paper describes an application of the dual boundary element method to the analysis of mixed-mode crack growth in linear elastic fracture mechanics. Crack-growth processes are simulated with an incremental crack-extension analysis based on the maximum principal stress criterion which is expressed in terms of the stress intensity factors. For each increment of the crack extension, the dual boundary element method is applied to perform a single-region stress analysis of the cracked structure and the J-integral technique is used to compute the stress intensity factors. When the crack extension is modelled with new boundary elements, remeshing is not required because of the single-region analysis, an intrinsic feature of the dual boundary element method. Results of this incremental crack-extension analysis are presented for several geometries. The analysis of fatigue crack-growth is introduced as a post-processing procedure on the crack-extension results and an example is presented.