CRACK PATH FIELD AND STRAIN INJECTION TECHNIQUES IN DYNAMIC FRACTURE SIMULATIONS

LLOVEAS-VALS O.; A E. HUESPE; J. OLIVER,; DIAS I.

Creta

Conferencia; ECCOMAS Congress 2016 VII European Congress on Computational Methods in Applied S ciences and Engineering; 2016

ECCOMAS

Dynamic fracture phenomena are studied employing low cost computational toolsbased on Finite Elements with Embedded strong discontinuities (E-FEM). Fracture nucleationand propagation are accounted for through the injection of discontinuous strain and displace-ment modes inside the finite elements. The Crack Path Field technique is employed to computethe trace of the strong discontinuity during fracture propagation.Unstable crack propagation and crack branching are observed upon increasing loadingrates. The variation in terms of crack pattern and energy dissipation is studied and a good cor-relation is found between the maximum experimental crack speed and maximum dissipation atthe onset of branching. Comparable results are obtained against simulations employing supra-elemental techniques, such as phase-field and gradient damage models, considering coarserdiscretizations which can differ by two orders of magnitude.