22nd Congress of International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, Harrogate, UK, 28 August - 1st September, 2000
Paper ICAS 2000-4.2.R1

AN ADAPTATIVE FINITE ELEMENT FRAMEWORK FOR FATIGUE CRACK PROPAGATION

D. Givoli, R. Zusman
Technion — Israel Institute of Technology, ISRAEL

Keywords: finite element, fatigue crack propagation, fracture, adaptive mesh, mixed mode

A new adaptive Finite Element (FE) framework for Fatigue Crack Propagation (FCP) analysis is proposed. This framework combines the simplicity of standard industrial FCP analysis with the generality and accuracy of a full FE analysis and can be implemented by combining standard existing computational tools. In this way it constitutes an attractive alternative to existing approaches. Some novel features are introduced in several of the steps of the proposed scheme in order to make it efficient and at the same time reasonably accurate. A two-dimensional numerical example involving FCP in a thin sheet under plane-stress conditions is presented to demonstrate the scheme’s performance. The numerical results are compared to those of laboratory experiments.

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