Development of Numerical Simulation Method for Fracture Path Prediction in Elastic-Plastic Materials based on Incremental Variational Principle

Abstract

First, for growing cracks in elastic-plastic materials, an incremental variational principle is developed to satisfy the boundary conditions near newly created crack surfaces. Then using this variational principle, the moving finite element method is formulated and developed, based on the Delaunay automatic triangulation. Furthermore, theoretical backgrounds on numerical prediction for fracture path of curving crack using T^* integral are explained. Using the automatic moving finite element method, fracture-path prediction simulation is carried out for elastic-plastic fracture under mixed-mode loading.