Dynel Application 3:

Fracture mechanics (Mode I crack)

We have tested the code with a simple model of a vertical crack subjected to an orthogonal extension (see Fig.1a for model parameters). The convergence of the system is shown in Fig.1b by plotting the number of iterations versus the average displacement component Ux for the entire set of model nodes. This shows that the system has adequate converged by the 600th iteration and that Ux tends to zero smoothly. Note that the values first diverge and then after 80 iterations converge toward zero. We have computed principal stresses (s₁ and s₂) (see Fig. 2).

Figure 1: (a) Model configuration of a vertical crack loaded with an orthogonal extension. (b) Graph of the convergence of the system.

Figure 2: Computed s₁ and s₂.