Numerical investigation of stable crack growth in ductile materials using XFEM

Abstract

In the present work, extended finite element method (XFEM) has been extended to simulate nonlinear stable crack growth problems. In XFEM, the cracks are modeled by adding enrichment functions into standard finite element approximation. The modeling of large deformations is done using updated Lagrangian approach. Von-Mises yield criterion has been used along with isotropic hardening to check the plasticity. Elastic-predictor and plastic-corrector algorithm has been used for the computation of stress fields. The nonlinear equations are solved by Newton-Raphson iterative scheme. Two problems (crack growth in compact tension and triple point bend specimens) are solved using J-R curve to show the capability of XFEM in modeling large deformation crack growth problems. © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.