Calculation of T-stress for cracks in two-dimensional anisotropic elastic media by boundary integral equation method

A numerical procedure is proposed to compute the T-stress for two-dimensional cracks in general anisotropic elastic media. T-stress is determined from the sum of crack-face displacements which are computed via an integral equation of the boundary data. To smooth out the data in order to perform accurately numerical differentiation, the sum of crack-face displacement is established in a weak-form integral equation in which the integration domain is simply the crack-tip element. This weak-form integral equation is then solved numerically using standard Galerkin approximation to obtain the nodal values of the sum of crack-face displacements. The procedure is incorporated in a weakly-singular symmetric Galerkin boundary element method in which all integral equations for the traction and displacement on the boundary of the domain and on the crack faces include (at most) weakly-singular kernels. To examine the accuracy and efficiency of the developed method, various numerical examples for cracks in infinite and finite domains are treated. It is shown that highly accurate results are obtained using relatively coarse meshes.     

Regularized boundary integral equations for two-dimensional crack problems in multi-field media

A systematic procedure is followed to develop a set of regularized boundary integral equations for modeling cracks in 2D linear multi-field media. The class of media treated is quite general and includes, as special cases, anisotropic elasticity, piezoelectricity and magnetoelectroelasticity. Of particular interest is the development of a pair of weakly-singular, weak-form integral equations for ‘generalized displacement’ and ‘generalized stress’; these serve as the basis for a weakly-singular symmetric Galerkin boundary element method.     

An integral equation approach to the inclusion-crack interactions in three-dimensional infinite elastic domain

 In this paper, an integral equation method to the inclusion-crack interaction problem in three-dimensional elastic medium is presented. The method is implemented following the idea that displacement integral equation is used at the source points situated in the inclusions, whereas stress integral equation is applied to source points along crack surfaces. The displacement and stress integral equations only contain unknowns in displacement (in inclusions) and displacement discontinuity (along cracks). The hypersingular integrals appearing in stress integral equation are analytically transferred to line integrals (for plane cracks) which are at most weakly singular. Finite elements are adopted to discretize the inclusions into isoparametric quadratic 10-node tetrahedral or 20-node hexahedral elements and the crack surfaces are decomposed into discontinuous quadratic quadrilateral elements. Special crack tip elements are used to simulate the variation of displacements near the crack front. The stress intensity factors along the crack front are calculated. Numerical results are compared with other available methods. Received: 28 January 2002 / Accepted: 4 June 2002 The work described in this paper was partially supported by a grant from the Research Grant Council of the Hong Kong Special Administration Region, China (Project No.: HKU 7101/99 E).     

Weakly singular integral equations for Darcy's flow in anisotropic porous media

The weakly singular, weak-form fluid pressure and fluid flux integral equations are developed for steady-state Darcy's flow in a porous media which possesses generally anisotropic permeability. A systematic technique is established first to regularize the conventional fluid pressure and fluid flux integral equations in which the former contains a singular kernel (of order 1/r²) and the latter contains a strongly singular kernel (of order 1/r³). The key step in the regularization procedure is to construct decompositions for the fluid velocity fundamental solution and the strongly singular kernel in a form well-suited for performing an integration by parts via Stokes' theorem. Weakly singular kernels appearing in these decompositions are obtained in an explicit form by the Radon transform method. The final integral equations possess following important features: (1) they contain only weakly singular kernels of order 1/r; (2) their validity requires only the continuity of pressure boundary data; and (3) they are applicable for modeling steady-state flow in porous media possessing generally anisotropic permeability and containing surfaces of discontinuity. A proper use of this set of weak-from integral equations forms a symmetric formulation for a weakly singular, symmetric Galerkin boundary element method (SGBEM). The numerical implementation is then carried out and certain examples are solved to demonstrate the accuracy of the method.     

Analysis of fractures in 3D piezoelectric media by a weakly singular integral equation method

A weakly singular, symmetric Galerkin boundary element method (SGBEM) is established to compute stress and electric intensity factors for isolated cracks in three-dimensional, generally anisotropic, piezoelectric media. The method is based upon a weak-form integral equation, for the surface traction and the surface electric charge, which is established by means of a systematic regularization procedure; the integral equation is in a symmetric form and is completely regularized in the sense that its integrand contains only weakly singular kernels of (hence allowing continuous interpolations to be employed in the numerical approximation). The weakly singular kernels which appear in the weak-form integral equation are expressed explicitly, for general anisotropy, in terms of a line integral over a unit circle. In the numerical implementation, a special crack-tip element is adopted to discretize the region near the crack front while the remainder of the crack surface is discretized by standard continuous elements. The special crack-tip element allows the relative crack-face displacement and electric potential in the vicinity of the crack front to be captured to high accuracy (even with relatively large elements), and it has the important feature that the mixed-mode intensity factors can be directly and independently extracted from the crack front nodal data. To enhance the computational efficiency of the method, special integration quadratures are adopted to treat both singular and nearly singular integrals, and an interpolation strategy is developed to approximate the weakly singular kernels. As demonstrated by various numerical examples for both planar and non-planar fractures, the method gives rise to highly accurate intensity factors with only a weak dependence on mesh refinement.     

Anti-plane problem of periodic interface cracks in a functionally graded coating-substrate structure

In this paper, the interface cracking between a functionally graded material (FGM) and an elastic substrate is analyzed under antiplane shear loads. Two crack configurations are considered, namely a FGM bonded to an elastic substrate containing a single crack and a periodic array of interface cracks, respectively. Standard integral-transform techniques are employed to reduce the single crack problem to the solution of an integral equation with a Cauchy-type singular kernel. However, for the periodic cracks problem, application of finite Fourier transform techniques reduces the solution of the mixed-boundary value problem for a typical strip to triple series equations, then to a singular integral equation with a Hilbert-type singular kernel. The resulting singular integral equation is solved numerically. The results for the cases of single crack and periodic cracks are presented and compared. Effects of crack spacing, material properties and FGM nonhomogeneity on stress intensity factors are investigated in detail.     

Efficient solution of multiple cracks in great number using eigen COD boundary integral equations with iteration procedure

A newly developed computational approach is proposed in the paper for the analysis of multiple crack problems based on the eigen crack opening displacement (COD) boundary integral equations. The eigen COD particularly refers to a crack in an infinite domain under fictitious traction acting on the crack surface. With the concept of eigen COD, the multiple cracks in great number can be solved by using the conventional displacement discontinuity boundary integral equations in an iterative fashion with a small size of system matrix to determine all the unknown CODs step by step. To deal with the interactions among cracks for multiple crack problems, all cracks in the problem are divided into two groups, namely the adjacent group and the far-field group, according to the distance to the current crack in consideration. The adjacent group contains cracks with relatively small distances but strong effects to the current crack, while the others, the cracks of far-field group are composed of those with relatively large distances. Correspondingly, the eigen COD of the current crack is computed in two parts. The first part is computed by using the fictitious tractions of adjacent cracks via the local Eshelby matrix derived from the traction boundary integral equations in discretized form, while the second part is computed by using those of far-field cracks so that the high computational efficiency can be achieved in the proposed approach. The numerical results of the proposed approach are compared not only with those using the dual boundary integral equations (D-BIE) and the BIE with numerical Green's functions (NGF) but also with those of the analytical solutions in literature. The effectiveness and the efficiency of the proposed approach is verified. Numerical examples are provided for the stress intensity factors of cracks, up to several thousands in number, in both the finite and infinite plates.     

Dual boundary element analysis for fatigue behavior of missile structures

Abstract

The fatigue behavior of a crack in a missile structure is studied using the dual boundary integral equations developed by Hong and Chen (1988). This method, which incorporates two independent boundary integral equations, uses the displacement equation to model one of the crack boundaries and the traction equation to the other. A single domain approach can be performed efficiently. The stress intensity factors are calculated and the paths of crack growth are predicted. In order to evaluate the results of dual BEM, four examples with FEM results are provided. Two practical examples, cracks in a V‐band and a solid propellant motor are studied and are compared with experimental data. Good agreement is found.     

Asymmetrical Cracks Parallel to an Interface between Dissimilar Materials

This paper solves a plane strain problem for two bonded dissimilar planes containing a crack parallel to the interface in each layer. The bimaterial system is loaded by tractions distributed along the crack surfaces. Based on the Fourier transform, the problem is reduced to a system of Cauchy type singular integral equations which contain exact and explicit kernel functions. The solution of these equations is obtained easily by utilizing Gauss–Chebyshev integral formulae for various material combinations and geometrical parameters. Several numerical results of stress intensity factors, energy release rate and stress distribution along the interface are presented to exhibit the interaction among cracks and interface. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Displacement Discontinuity Method for Fracture Mechanics Analysis of Reissner Plates: Static and Dynamic

This paper is concerned with the displacement discontinuity method applied to the shear deformable plates (Reissner’s and Mindlin’s theories) with cracks subjected to static and dynamic loads. Fundamental solutions of dislocation are derived using the Fourier transform method and the Laplace transformation technique. Boundary integral equations are presented in terms of rotations/displacement on the crack surfaces. The Chebyshev polynomials of the second kind are used to evaluate the integral equations with hypersingular kernels on the crack boundaries and determine the stress intensity factors at the crack tips. Comparisons are made with other numerical solutions to demonstrate the proposed method is accurate both for static and dynamic problems.     

Evaluation of fracture parameters in continuously nonhomogeneous piezoelectric solids

A contour integral method is developed for computation of stress intensity and electric intensity factors for cracks in continuously nonhomogeneous piezoelectric body under a transient dynamic load. It is shown that the asymptotic fields in the crack-tip vicinity in a continuously nonhomogeneos medium is the same as in a homogeneous one. A meshless method based on the local Petrov-Galerkin approach is applied for computation of physical fields occurring in the contour integral expressions of intensity factors. A unit step function is used as the test functions in the local weak-form. This leads to local integral equations (LBIEs) involving only contour-integrals on the surfaces of subdomains. The moving least-squares (MLS) method is adopted for approximating the physical quantities in the LBIEs. The accuracy of the present method for computing the stress intensity factors (SIF) and electrical displacement intensity factors (EDIF) are discussed by comparison with available analytical or numerical solutions.     

Multiple Zener-Stroh crack problem in an infinite plate

Summary. In this paper, the multiple Zener-Stroh crack problem is studied. We choose the distributed dislocations as unknown functions in the integral equation. The crack faces are assumed to be traction free. The applied generalized loading for cracks is the initial displacement jump (abbreviated as IDJ), which in turn is the increment of displacement when a moving point goes around the crack in a closed loop. A system of singular integral equations is obtained. After solving the integral equations, the stress intensity factors at crack tips can be evaluated immediately. Numerical examples are given. It is found that interactions between Zener-Stroh cracks are quite different from those for the Griffith cracks, in the qualitative and quantitative aspects.AcknowledgementThe research project is supported by National Natural Foundation of China.     

Hypersingular integral equations for a thermoelastic problem of multiple planar cracks in an anisotropic medium

The problem of calculating the thermoelastic stress around an arbitrary number of arbitrarily located planar cracks in an infinite anisotropic medium is considered. The cracks open up under the action of suitably prescribed heat flux and traction. With the aid of suitable integral solutions, we reduce the problem to solving a system of Hadamard finite-part (hypersingular) integral equations. The hypersingular integral equations are solved for specific cases of the problem.     

Crack analysis in unidirectionally and bidirectionally functionally graded materials

Mixed-mode crack analysis in unidirectionally and bidirectionally functionally graded materials is performed by using a boundary integral equation method. To make the analysis tractable, the Young's modulus of the functionally graded materials is assumed to be exponentially dependent on spatial variables, while the Poisson's ratio is assumed to be constant. The corresponding boundary value problem is formulated as a set of hypersingular traction boundary integral equations, which are solved numerically by using a Galerkin method. The present method is especially suited for straight cracks in infinite FGMs. Numerical results for the elastostatic stress intensity factors are presented and discussed. Special attention of the analysis is devoted to investigate the effects of the material gradients and the crack orientation on the elastostatic stress intensity factors.     

Edge cracks in a transversely isotropic hollow cylinder

The analytical solution for the linear elastic, axisymmetric problem of inner and outer edge cracks in a transversely isotropic infinitely long hollow cylinder is considered. The z = 0 plane on which the crack lies is a plane of symmetry. The loading is uniform crack surface pressure. The mixed boundary value problem is reduced to a singular integral equation where the unknown is the derivative of the crack surface displacement. An asymptotic analysis is done to derive the generalized Cauchy kernel associated with edge cracks. It is shown that the stress intensity factor is a function of three material parameters. The singular integral equation is solved numerically. Stress intensity factors are presented for various values of material and geometric parameters.     

不连续位移超奇异积分方程法解三维多裂纹问题

本文采用Ｂｅｔｉ互等功定理，导出了三维不连续位移基本解的一般形式，然后以该基本解为核函数，建立了求解三维多裂纹问题的超奇异边界积分方程组，并采用三角形单元变换技术和有限部分积分的方法给出了超奇异积分的数值解法，引入非协调单元处理技术解决了法向不确定的角点问题。最后，由裂纹面间断位移可直接求得裂纹前沿任意点的应力强度因子     

Computation of stress intensity factors of interface cracks based on interaction energy release rates and BEM sensitivity analysis

Stress intensity factors of bimaterial interface cracks are evaluated based on the interaction energy release rates. The interaction energy release rate is defined based on the energy release rates of a cracked body, corresponding to two independent loading conditions, actual field and an auxiliary field, and is related to the sensitivities of the potential energies for crack extensions. The potential energy of a cracked body is expressed with a domain integral, which is converted to a boundary integral expression by applying the divergence theorem. By differentiating this expression with the crack length, a boundary integral expression for the interaction energy release rate is obtained. The boundary integral representation for the interaction energy release rate involves the displacement, the traction, and their sensitivity coefficients with respect to the crack length. The boundary element sensitivity analyses are used to calculate these quantities accurately. A regularized boundary integral equation relating the boundary displacement and traction is differentiated with respect to an arbitrary shape parameter to derive the regularized boundary integral equation for the sensitivity coefficients of the boundary displacement and traction. The proposed approach is applied to several cracks in dissimilar media and the results are compared with those obtained by the conventional approach based on the extrapolation method. The analytical displacement and stress solutions for an interface crack between two infinite dissimilar media subjected to uniform stresses at infinity are used to give the auxiliary field, in which the values of the stress intensity factors are known. It is demonstrated that the present method can give accurate results for the stress intensity factors of various bimaterial interface cracks under coarse mesh discretizations.     

An efficient dual boundary element technique for a two-dimensional fracture problem with multiple cracks

An efficient dual boundary element technique for the analysis of a two-dimensional finite body with multiple cracks is established. In addition to the displacement integral equation derived for the outer boundary, since the relative displacement of the crack surfaces is adopted in the formulation, only the traction integral equation is established on one of the crack surfaces. For each crack, a virtual boundary is devised and connected to one of the crack surfaces to construct a closed integral path. The rigid body translation for the domain enclosed by the closed integral path is then employed for evaluating the hypersingular integral. To solve the dual displacement/traction integral equations simultaneously, the constant and quadratic isoparametric elements are taken to discretize the closed integral paths/crack surfaces and the outer boundary, respectively. The present method has distinct computational advantages in solving a fracture problem which has arbitrary numbers, distributions, orientations and shapes of cracks by a few boundary elements. Several examples are analysed and the computed results are in excellent agreement with other analytical or numerical solutions.     

An Interaction Integral Method for Computing Fracture Parameters in Functionally Graded Magnetoelectroelastic Composites

A contour integral method is developed for the computation of stress intensity, electric and magnetic intensity factors for cracks in continuously nonhomogeneous magnetoelectroelastic solids under a transient dynamic load. It is shown that the asymptotic fields in the crack-tip vicinity in a continuously nonhomogeneos medium are the same as in a homogeneous one. A meshless method based on the local Petrov-Galerkin approach is applied for the computation of the physical fields occurring in the contour integral expressions of intensity factors. A unit step function is used as the test functions in the local weak-form. This leads to local integral equations (LIEs) involving only contour-integrals on the surfaces of subdomains. The moving least-squares (MLS) method is adopted for approximating the physical quantities in the LIEs. The accuracy of the present method for computing the stress intensity factors (SIF), electrical displacement intensity factors (EDIF) and magnetic induction intensity factors (MIIF) are discussed by comparison with numerical solutions for homogeneous materials.     

Numerical Green's functions for some electroelastic crack problems

A plane electroelastic problem involving planar cracks in a piezoelectric body is considered. The deformation of the body is assumed to be independent of time and one of the Cartesian coordinates. The cracks are traction free and are electrically either permeable or impermeable. Numerical Green's functions which satisfy the boundary conditions on the cracks are derived using the hypersingular integral approach and applied to obtain a boundary integral solution for the electroelastic crack problem considered here. As the conditions on the cracks are built into the Green's functions, the boundary integral solution does not contain integrals over the cracks. It is used to derive a boundary element procedure for computing the crack tip stress and electrical displacement intensity factors.