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Peridynamics simulation of initiation and propagation of a crack in a pre-notched plate

Amirfarzad Behnam
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Tennessee

This page shows visualizations of the crack propagation and branching in a brittle material under uniform tensile stress. This is an open problem in the computational mechanics field targeted by several scientists numerically and experimentally.

Peridynamics can be cast as an upscaling of molecular dynamics as they have similar discrete computational structure. So, this made it possible to use the molecular dynamics simulation packages to perform the Peridynamics simulation. In this project, the Peridynamics method implemented in LAMMPS is used to simulate the dynamic crack branching in a brittle material for few numbers of grid refinement levels and Peridynamics horizons. The results are compared to the experiments in terms of the propagation shape and speed. It is shown that the Peridynamics method captures the main experimentally observed features such as branching and crack growth speed. All of these results are obtained using minimum information such as density, elastic stiffness and constant fracture energy, and no criteria for crack propagation, or crack curving are used. 1

Interactive Structures


Color Legend:

  • Magenta = Prenotched part of the plate
  • Grass Green = Crack propagation and branching
  • Gray = Boundary material to apply uniform tensile strength

References

1. Ha, Youn Doh, and Florin Bobaru. "Studies of dynamic crack propagation and crack branching with peridynamics." International Journal of Fracture 162.1-2 (2010): 229-244, doi: 10.1007/s10704-010-9442-4

posted: April 2020.
updated: April 2020.