Boundary element analysis of stress intensity factors for Z-shaped cracks

The stress intensity factors for Z-shaped cracks are computed by the boundary element method employing the multiregion technique and the double-point concept. To demonstrate the validity of the current method, the stress intensity factors of other well-known simple models such as a slanted edge crack and an arcular crack are determined, in advance, which are proved to be in good agreement within 5% with the preexisting solutions. Z-shaped cracks are analyzed with various branch crack lengths and branching angles.     

Boundary element analysis of interface cracks subjected to non-uniform thermal loading

This work applies the method of multi-region boundary element to analyze the thermal stress intensity factor (TSIF) of the bi-material interface cracks subjected to linear and quadratic temperature distribution. An attempt is also made to resolve the problem containing body force which is caused by the inhomogeneous thermal loading by, initially, separating the solution of the inhomogeneous problem of each material into homogeneous and particular solutions, as proposed by Sung. The particular solution can be obtained by expanding the body force into Fourier series and, then, solving each term of the Fourier series. Next, inserting the obtained particular solutions into the boundary conditions of the original problem allows us to reduce the inhomogeneous problem to a homogeneous one. Moreover, the program of thermal multi-region BEM (TMBEM), which neither requires a domain integral nor changes the kernel functions, is established by imposing the continuity conditions on the interfaces. Finally, the applications of TMBEM are illustrated by evaluating the TSIFs of the interface cracks of bi-material subjected to linear and quadratic temperature distributions.     

Boundary element analysis of three‐dimensional cracks in anisotropic solids

This paper presents a boundary element analysis of linear elastic fracture mechanics in three‐dimensional cracks of anisotropic solids. The method is a single‐domain based, thus it can model the solids with multiple interacting cracks or damage. In addition, the method can apply the fracture analysis in both bounded and unbounded anisotropic media and the stress intensity factors (SIFs) can be deduced directly from the boundary element solutions. The present boundary element formulation is based on a pair of boundary integral equations, namely, the displacement and traction boundary integral equations. While the former is collocated exclusively on the uncracked boundary, the latter is discretized only on one side of the crack surface. The displacement and/or traction are used as unknown variables on the uncracked boundary and the relative crack opening displacement (COD) (i.e. displacement discontinuity, or dislocation) is treated as a unknown quantity on the crack surface. This formulation possesses the advantages of both the traditional displacement boundary element method (BEM) and the displacement discontinuity (or dislocation) method, and thus eliminates the deficiency associated with the BEMs in modelling fracture behaviour of the solids. Special crack‐front elements are introduced to capture the crack‐tip behaviour. Numerical examples of stress intensity factors (SIFs) calculation are given for transversely isotropic orthotropic and anisotropic solids. For a penny‐shaped or a square‐shaped crack located in the plane of isotropy, the SIFs obtained with the present formulation are in very good agreement with existing closed‐form solutions and numerical results. For the crack not aligned with the plane of isotropy or in an anisotropic solid under remote pure tension, mixed mode fracture behavior occurs due to the material anisotropy and SIFs strongly depend on material anisotropy. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Boundary element modeling of cracks in piezoelectric solids

This study focuses on the application of boundary element methods for linear fracture mechanics of two-dimensional piezoelectric solids. A complete set of piezoelectric Green's functions, based on the extended Lekhnitskii's formalism and distributed dislocation modeling, are presented. Special Green's functions are obtained for an infinite medium containing a conducting crack or an impermeable crack. The numerical solution of the boundary integral equation and the computation of fracture parameters are discussed. The concept of crack closure integral is utilized to calculate energy release rates. Accuracy of the boundary element solutions is confirmed by comparing with analytical solutions reported in the literature. The present scheme can be applied to study complex cracks such as branched cracks, forked cracks and microcrack clusters.     

Boundary element analysis of cracks at a fastener hole in an anisotropic sheet

Stress intensity factors for cracks emanating from a fastener hole are obtained, using the principle of superposition and a Green's function for a point force applied in an anisotropic sheet with an elliptical hole. Various loading cases, such as a point load, a uniform pressure applied on an arc, and a cosine distribution of pressure acting over half the circumference of the hole are considered to simulate the bolted-joint load. Both cases of a single crack and of two cracks of unequal lengths are studied. The accuracy and simplicity of the technique are demonstrated by comparing numerical results for various loading conditions and crack lengths with their known isotropic counterparts.     

Boundary element analysis of thermal stress intensity factors for interface griffith and cusp cracks

The thermal stress intensity factors for interface cracks of Griffith and symmetric lip cusp types under vertical uniform heat flow in a finite body are calculated by the boundary element method. The boundary conditions on the crack surfaces are insulated or fixed to constant temperature. The relationship between the stress intensity factors and the displacements on the nodal point of a crack-tip element is derived. The numerical values of the thermal stress intensity factors for an interface Griffith crack in an infinite body are compared with the previous solutions. The thermal stress intensity factors for a symmetric lip cusp interface crack in a finite body are calculated with respect to various effective crack lengths, configuration parameters, material property ratios and the thermal boundary conditions on the crack surfaces. Under the same outer boundary conditions, there are no appreciable differences in the distribution of thermal stress intensity factors with respect to each material property. However, the effect of crack surface thermal boundary conditions on the thermal stress intensity factors is considerable.     

Boundary element analysis of inclusions with corners

Boundary element method (BEM) has proven to have very good resolution of large stress gradients such as those that may arise at material interface and reentrant corners. There is, however, a paucity of literature in usage of BEM when the inclusion has a corner. The stress singularity at the corner creates numerical difficulties that need to be addressed. This paper describes: application of BEM to inclusion with and without corners; the numerical modeling difficulties; a methodology for calculation of eigenvalues and stress intensity factors without elaborate analytical expressions; and the future research that is needed for the growth of the boundary element methodology for application to inclusion problems. Numerical results for a rectangular inclusion with sharp and fillet corners that in the limit becomes a circular inclusion demonstrate the potential of the proposed methodology in the analysis of inclusion problems.     

Boundary element analysis for viscoelastic solids containing interfaces/holes/cracks/inclusions

With the aid of the elastic–viscoelastic correspondence principle, the boundary element developed for the linear anisotropic elastic solids can be applied directly to the linear anisotropic viscoelastic solids in the Laplace domain. Green's functions for the problems of two-dimensional linear anisotropic elastic solids containing holes, cracks, inclusions, or interfaces have been obtained analytically using Stroh's complex variable formalism. Through the use of these Green's functions and the correspondence principle, special boundary elements in the Laplace domain for viscoelastic solids containing holes, cracks, inclusions, or interfaces are developed in this paper. Subregion technique is employed when multiple holes, cracks, inclusions, and interfaces exist simultaneously. After obtaining the physical responses in Laplace domain, their associated values in time domain are calculated by the numerical inversion of Laplace transform. The main feature of this proposed boundary element is that no meshes are needed along the boundary of holes, cracks, inclusions and interfaces whose boundary conditions are satisfied exactly. To show this special feature by comparison with the other numerical methods, several examples are solved for the linear isotropic viscoelastic materials under plane strain condition. The results show that the present BEM is really more efficient and accurate for the problems of viscoelastic solids containing interfaces, holes, cracks, and/or inclusions.     

Fatigue crack closure analysis of bridged cracks representing composite repairs

This article presents an analytical and numerical study of the fatigue crack‐closure behaviour of a bridged crack representing a crack that has been repaired by a composite patch. It is shown that, provided that the plate stress beneath the patch is less than 40% of the material’s yield stress, the crack‐closure stress of a patched crack is approximately equal to that of an unbridged crack under small‐scale yielding, depending only on the stress ratio. Furthermore, it is shown that the transient crack‐closure behaviour of a patched crack subjected to variable amplitude loading can be determined by analysing an unpatched crack subjected to the same stress intensity factor history. Based on these findings, it is proposed that the fatigue crack closure of a patched crack can be determined by analysing an unpatched centre crack subjected to an adjusted stress, for which an explicit expression is given. Predictions based on the proposed method are shown to correlate very well with experimental results obtained under two aircraft loading spectra.     

Boundary element analysis of 2D thin walled structures with high-order geometry elements using transformation

Thin structures have been widely designed and utilized in many industries. However, the analysis of the mechanical behavior of such structures represents a very challenging and attractive task to scientists and engineers because of their special geometrical shapes. The major difficulty in applying the boundary element method (BEM) to thin structures is the coinstantaneous existence of the singular and nearly singular integrals in conventional boundary integral equation (BIE). In this paper, a non-linear transformation over curved surface elements is introduced and applied to the indirect regularized boundary element method for 2-D thin structural problems. The developed transformation can remove or damp out the nearly singular properties of the integral kernels, based on the idea of diminishing the difference of the orders of magnitude or the scale of change of operational factors. For the test problems studied, very promising results are obtained when the thickness to length ratio is in the orders of 1E?01 to 1E?06, which is sufficient for modeling most thin structures in industrial applications.     

A novel singular finite element on mixed-mode bimaterial interfacial cracks with arbitrary crack surface tractions

This paper investigates interfacial cracks with arbitrary crack surface tractions. A novel singular finite element which is constructed with the analytical solution around interfacial cracks is presented. Interfacial crack problems can be analyzed numerically using the singular finite element, and Mode I and/or Mode II stress intensity factors can be obtained directly. Unlike other enriched elements for cracks, neither extra unknowns nor transition elements are required. Numerical examples are given to illustrate the validity of present method.     

Dual boundary element analysis of closed cracks

A two-dimensional boundary element method for analysis of closed or partially closed cracks under normal and frictional forces is developed. The single domain dual formulation is used. As a contact problem is non-linear due to the friction phenomena at the crack interface and also because of the boundary conditions which may change during the loading, it is formulated in an incremental and iterative fashion. The stress intensity factors are calculated with the J-integral method. Also crack growth is considered. Several benchmark cases have been analysed to verify the results given by the method. The stress intensity factors and crack paths calculated are similar to those given in the literature. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An inverse problem in estimating interfacial cracks in bimaterials by boundary element technique

An inverse elasticity problem by utilizing both the regularization method (RM) and the conjugate gradient method (CGM) is presented for estimating the interfacial cracks (including location and shape) of a bimaterial from the measurement of displacements at discrete locations internal to the domain and parallel to the interface. The present algorithm in determining the interfacial cracks is totally different from the conventional one. The comparisons of using the conjugate gradient method and commonly used regularization method are discussed systematically, moreover, the advantages and disadvantages in applying the large matrix (LM) and small matrix (SM) formulations are also examined. To the author's knowledge the present work is the first of its kind. Finally, the effects of the measurement errors on the inverse solutions are discussed. Results show that the present inverse algorithms are not sensitive to measurement errors. The CGM is recommended because it is straightforward, LM formulation is better than SM formulation without the consideration of computer time. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Interactions of interfacial arc cracks

The interaction of two interfacial arc cracks around a circular elastic inclusion embedded in an elastic matrix is examined. New results for stress intensity factors for a pair of interacting cracks are derived for a concentrated force acting in the matrix. For verifying the point load solutions, stress intensity factors under uniform loading are obtained by superposing point force results. For achieving this objective, a general method for generating desired stress fields inside a test region using point loads is described. The energetics of two interacting interfacial arc cracks is discussed in order to shed more light on the debonding of hard or soft inclusions from the matrix. The analysis based on complex variables is developed in a general way to handle the interactions of multiple interfacial arc cracks/straight cracks.     

Boundary element analysis of dielectric waveguides

We apply the boundary element method to the analysis of optical waveguides. After summarizing constant and linear element algorithms for both two- and three-dimensional simulations, we introduce a new recursive series procedure for constructing the diagonal matrix elements. We then demonstrate that our method can be employed to minimize the reflectivity of optical waveguide antireflection coatings with both straight and angled facets.     

Boundary element analysis of Navier-Stokes equations

As arrangements, the fundamental solutions of anisotropic convective diffusion equations of transient incompressible viscous fluid flow and boundary elements analysis of the diffusion equation are presented. Secondly, by considering that convective diffusion equations and Navier-Stokes equations are mathematical formulations of mass and momentum conservation law respectively, and that consequently, both physical contents and equation styles are analogous, boundary integral formulations for Navier-Stokes equations are proposed on the basis of formulation of diffusion equations.     

Multilayer hybrid-stress finite element analysis of composite laminate with through-thickness cracks

An assumed hybrid-stress finite element model using a simple composite multilayer element is developed to analyze generally thin or moderately thick composite laminates with through-thickness cracks. The assumed stress field satisfies: (i) equilibrium conditions within each layer, (ii) the traction reciprocity conditions at interlaminar boundaries, and (iii) the traction-free boundary conditions at the top and bottom faces of the laminate. Since the number of nodes and assumed stress parameters are independent of the number of layers, the multilayer element devised is quite effective especially for the laminate with a large number of layers. Several selected composite laminates with a through-thickness edge crack are solved. Many fewer degrees of freedom and only a one-step solution are necessary for the present technique. The variations of mixed-mode stress intensity factors across the thickness of the composite laminate are also computed. Excellent agreements between the present results and referenced solutions are drawn. The technique developed is also applicable to analyze the structural behaviors of the cracked laminate with arbitrary fiber orientation and stacking sequence for which the stress singularity has not yet been found.     

A hybrid finite element analysis of interface cracks

A versatile hybrid finite element scheme consisting of special crack-tip elements and crack face contact elements is developed to analyse a partially closed interface crack between two dissimilar anisotropic elastic materials. The crack-tip element incorporates higher-order asymptotic solutions for an interfacial crack tip. These solutions are obtained from complex variable methods in Stroh formalism. For a closed interfacial crack tip, a generalized contact model in which the crack-tip oscillation is eliminated is adopted in the calculation. The hybrid finite element modelling allows the stress singularity at an open and closed crack tip to be accurately treated. The accuracy and convergence of the developed scheme are tested with respect to the known interface crack solutions. Utilizing this numerical scheme, the stress intensity factors and contact zone are calculated for a finite interface crack between a laminated composite material.