A medial-axis-based model for propagating cracks in a regularised bulk

作者：Tamayo Mas Elena; Rodriguez Ferran Antonio^*

来源：International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering, 2015, 101(7): 489-520.

DOI：10.1002/nme.4757

• continuous-discontinuous strategy
• regularisation
• smoothed displacements
• propagating cracks
• medial axis

A new continuous-discontinuous strategy for the simulation of failure is presented. The continuous bulk is regularised by means of a gradient-enhanced damage model, where non-locality is introduced at the level of displacements. As soon as the damage parameter is close or equal to 1, a traction-free crack is introduced. To determine the direction of crack growth, a new criterion is proposed. In contrast to traditional techniques, where mechanical criteria are used to define the crack path, here, a geometrical approach is used. More specifically, given a regularised damage field D(x), we propose to propagate the discontinuity following the direction dictated by the medial axis of the isoline (or isosurface in 3D) D(x) = D*. The proposed approach is tested on different two-dimensional and three-dimensional examples that illustrate that this combined methodology is able to deal with damage growth and material separation.

• 出版日期2015-2-17