A new class of cells with embedded discontinuity for fracture analysis by the boundary element method

Abstract

SummaryMaterial failure analysis are addressed by the continuum strong discontinuity approach within the implicit formulation of the boundary element method in this work. An automatic cell generation algorithm is used to track cracks during the loading processes in the nonlinear analysis. As a major novelty, a new class of cells with embedded discontinuity is developed in which nonuniform displacement jump components are considered. It is shown that this new approach eliminates the stress locking effect verified in propagation analyses using cells with embedded uniform discontinuous displacement field, since the relative rotational motion between the two portions of a cell can now be properly captured.