The Study on Crack Growth using Extended Finite Element Method

Cracks are small imperfections within a material that are created when it splits apart. These tend to propagate and cause further cracking by creating new surfaces, eventually splitting and causing the material to fail. In the field of Computational fracture mechanics the numerical methods have been employed and regarded as suitable tools to predict the fracture and failure of engineering structures. In the present work Abaqus 6.11 is used for crack analysis which includes crack initiation and propagation resulting in failure and the results are compared with the theoretical values. The Stress Intensity Factor (SIF) which defines the state of stress at the crack tip is used as an important parameter for estimating the life of the cracked structure. The crack growth simulations are presented using two XFEM techniques namely, Virtual crack closure technique (VCCT) and cohesive segments method. Variation of stress intensity factor with different parameters like crack length and crack angle are discussed.