Calculation of approximate weight functions in fracture mechanics by FEM

A method is presented for the calculation of weight functions used in fracture mechanics to determine stress intensity factors of cracks loaded by stress gradients. The reference solution for the stress intensity factor and for the reference crack opening displacement field is computed numerically by use of finite elements. The accuracy of the method is checked by comparison with well-known solutions from the literature.     

Estimation procedure for the Weibull parameters used in the local approach

The local approach was recently proposed by Beremin and Mudry for evaluating the statistical behaviour of toughness results of materials. This approach introduces a stress parameter _w , termed the Weibull stress, as a measure of the fracture resistance of materials instead of the conventional toughness parameters such as K _c, _c and J _cl (critical stress intensity factor, CTOD and J-integral, respectively). The Weibull stress _w obeys the Weibull distribution with the two parameters m and _u (the shape and the scale parameter, respectively). The first parameter m is normally estimated to be 22 irrespective of the kind of material. In this paper a procedure for the determination of the Weibull parameters m and _u is developed. This procedure consists of the determination of the plastic zone ahead of the crack tip, from which cleavage fracture originates, and of the maximum likelihood estimation of the parameters m and _u based on the stress distribution in the plastic zone. Calculations using this procedure confirm that the distribution of the Weibull stress _w is a material property independent of specimen thickness, and in particular that the shape parameter m depends on the material, e.g. m12 for a German reactor pressure vessel steel (20 Mn Mo Ni 5 5). Using these parameters for the distribution of the Weibull stress the size effect in fracture toughness values is predicted and an improved agreement between theory and experiments is obtained compared to the Weakest Link model.     

Developments in Plasma Processes for Extractive Metallurgy

With the recent availability of commercial plasma-generating devices capable of reliable performance at powers as high as 30 MW, the applications of plasma technology in high-temperature extractive metallurgy are rapidly increasing. Some of the more promising process developments are reviewed in this paper, as are newer reactor designs.     

Building Blocks for Arbitrary High Order Discontinuous Galerkin Schemes

In this article we propose the use of the ADER methodology of solving generalized Riemann problems to obtain a numerical flux, which is high order accurate in time, for being used in the Discontinuous Galerkin framework for hyperbolic conservation laws. This allows direct integration of the semi-discrete scheme in time and can be done for arbitrary order of accuracy in space and time. The resulting fully discrete scheme in time does not need more memory than an explicit first order Euler time-stepping scheme. This becomes possible because of an extensive use of the governing equations inside the numerical scheme itself via the so-called Cauchy–Kovalewski procedure. We give an efficient algorithm for this procedure for the special case of the nonlinear two-dimensional Euler equations. Numerical convergence results for the nonlinear Euler equations results up to 8th order of accuracy in space and time are shown     

Stress intensity factor at the surface and at the deepest point of a semi-elliptical surface crack in plates under stress gradients

The weight function method is used to calculate stress intensity factors for a semi-elliptical surface crack in a plate exposed to stress gradients. Starting from a reference load and stress intensity factor an approximate reference displacement field is calculated analytically. The present method allows to calculate stress intensity factors with minimal numerical effort at the deepest point and at the surface. Comparisons with FEM-results from the literature are presented to show satisfying agreement.     

On the accuracy of the Cruse-Besuner weight function approximation for two-dimensional cracks

The Cruse-Besuner method for calculating energy release rates or weighted stress intensity factors for semi-elliptical surface cracks is based on some assumptions. To check the accuracy of this method an internal elliptical crack under roof-shaped stress distribution is considered. The deviations from the exact solution are in the order of about 3%. From these results also for surface cracks in bending the same accuracies can be expected.

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Résumé On sait que la méthode de Gruse-Besuner pour le calcul des vitesses de relaxation de l'énergie ou des facteurs pondérés d'intensité de contraintes relatifs à des fissures de surface semi-elliptiques est basée sur certaines hypothèses.En vue de vérifier la précision de cette méthode, on considère une fissure elliptique interne soumise à une distribution triangulaire de contraintes. On constate que les écarts par rapport à la solution exacte sont de l'ordre de 3%.A partir de ces résultats, on peut s'attendre à une précision semblable pour des fissures de surface soumises à contraintes de flexion.