Meshless study of dynamic failure in shells

Abstract

The dynamic fracture of a thin-walled structure that is mainly due to impact and explosive loading is studied. Use is made of a meshless SPH shell formulation based on Mindlin-Reissner's theory. The formulation is an extension of the continuum-corrected and stabilized SPH method allowing a thin structure to be modelled using only one particle characterizing the mean position of the shell surface. Fracture is based on an effective criterion similar to that of the visibility method. Four numerical examples are studied among which tearing of pre-notched plates, fracture due to impact loading and dynamic fracture of cylindrical shells.