The macro-scale ductile crack growth criterion is postulated as
a material damage criterion. In specific, we measure the material
damage state of all the particles surrounding the current crack
tip, and subsequently we can calculate the accumulated damage
value for any fiber near the current crack tip. If the damage value
at one particular fiber exceeds the critical value, we then declare
it as the new crack tip, and subsequently, a crack length increment
is performed, and the crack tip moves from old position to a new
position.
In this work, we first choose either the volume fraction of voids,
or the effective plastic strain as the damage measure D. We then
choose a radial distance R, and draw a circle centered at the current
crack tip on the plate surface shown as the blue circle in Fig. 1(a).
Subsequently we can compute the damage value for each particles
inside the thin circular slice volume encircled by the blue line. Now
we can determine the damage value for each fiber inside the circu-
lar slice by adding the damage value of each particle along the fi-
ber. For example, the variable D
J
of fiber J is defined as sum of
damage values of each particle on the fiber J, i.e. D
J
¼
P
M
i¼1
D
Ji
, here
M ¼ 3 as shown in Fig. 1. We then apply the crack growth crite-
rion: D
J
P D
c
;
8
J ¼ 1; ...n
p
for every fiber inside the circle slice.
If there is a fiber J such that the condition D
J
> D
c
holds, we then
choose the fiber J as the new crack tip.
In practice, however, if the new crack tip is located behind the
current crack tip, it could lead to some complications such as
crack-direction-reverse phenomenon. To simplify the crack
approximation algorithm, we limit the potential new crack tip in-
side a fan region h
c
in the blue circle, shown as in Fig. 1(a). Here the
vector V1, which points from the previous crack tip to the current
crack tip, is shown as a dashed vector, and the angle h is defined
between the vector V2 (from the current crack tip to particle inside
circle) and vector V1. Finally, the new crack tip will be selected by
criterion,
D
J
P D
c
and h
c
=2 6 h 6 h
c
=2 ð20Þ
When using the criterion, Eq. (20), the computational accuracy of
predicting crack growth mainly depends on an appropriate damage
criterion. Moreover, an obvious limitation of this criterion is that
the crack reverse phenomenon is not considered.
3.2. Crack surface representation in plates
Once the new crack tip (a fiber) is selected, the old crack tip (a
fiber) will be split to two fibers, i.e., all particles in that fiber should
be split into two particles in order to form two new fibers. The par-
ticle splitting algorithm must keep conservation of volume, mass,
and kinematic energy. Assume that the previous crack orientation
vector (V1 in Fig. 1) and current crack orientation (V2 in Fig. 1)
split the computational domain into two part with angles /
1
and
/
2
, as shown in Fig. 1. The mass and volume of the new particles
are re-assigned according to the following rules,
Mass
new1
¼
/
1
2
p
Mass
old
ð21Þ
Mass
new2
¼
/
2
2
p
Mass
old
ð22Þ
Volume
new1
¼
/
1
2
p
Volume
old
ð23Þ
Volume
new2
¼
/
2
2
p
Volume
old
ð24Þ
The kinematic field variables, such as original position, displace-
ment, velocity, and acceleration of the new particles are assigned
according to,
X
new1
¼ X
old
þ d ð25Þ
X
new2
¼ X
old
d ð26Þ
Disp
new1
¼ Disp
old
þ d ð27Þ
Disp
new2
¼ Disp
old
d ð28Þ
Vel
new1
¼ Vel
old
ð29Þ
Vel
new2
¼ Vel
old
ð30Þ
Acc
new1
¼ 0:0 ð31Þ
Acc
new2
¼ 0:0 ð32Þ
where d is a vector that is perpendicular to the new crack orienta-
tion V2 at plate surface and jdj1. By using this particle splitting
procedure, the old particle X
old
on the outer surface of a shell is split
to two new particles (X
new1
and X
new2
) with a tiny spatial distance
between them in reference configuration, in which the 3D paramet-
ric visibility algorithm is used. After particle splitting, the old crack
tip fiber will be split into two new fibers, and there is a small dis-
tance between them, shown as Fig. 2(a), where the old crack tips
are marked as black squares.
3.3. 3D parametric visibility condition algorithm
The objective of the particle splitting algorithm is to separate
crack tip into two sets of particles in order to form new crack sur-
faces in physical space. In numerical simulations, the most crucial
step is how to adjust interpolation field surrounding the growing
crack tip to represent material separation in a computational do-
main. In contrast with FEM interpolation, meshfree interpolation
relies on a local connectivity map to associate one particle with
its neighboring particles. Therefore there must be an artificial algo-
rithm to ‘cut off’ the interpolation connection of particles due to
crack surface. In the 2D problem, Li and Simonsen (2005) consider
the crack surface as piece-wise straight line segments. They pro-
posed a 2D parametric visibility condition algorithm to re-interpo-
late the computational domain. Following a similar philosophy, in
this work we propose a 3D parametric visibility condition algo-
rithm, which can adjust meshfree interpolation field along crack
surfaces in three-dimensional space.
For macro-scale fracture problems, the crack surface can be
treated as an opaque wall, which may be figuratively thought as
a medium that blocks the sight between two particles in two sides
of the crack surface. In Fig. 2(a) the dashed vectors denote the
sights that are blocked by crack surface. From Fig. 2, one can find
the old crack tip fiber (marked as black square) located at the mid-
dle of crack surface at reference configuration. This paper approx-
imates the crack surface as piece-wise plane facets, one can
construct triangle plane facets by old crack tip fibers which are al-
ways located in the middle of crack surfaces as shown in Fig. 2(b),
here the dashed triangle facets is constructed by connecting the
first and last particles of crack tip fibers. In meshfree interpolation,
every particle has its own local connectivity map to define its
neighboring particles, once the line segment between a specified
particle and its neighboring particle intersects with the crack sur-
face (the dashed vector in Fig. 2(a)), we say that these two particles
cannot ‘see’ each other. Then this neighboring particle must be re-
moved from the local connectivity map of the particle. Since crack
growth is incremental, one only needs to check and modify the
connectivity maps for a limited number of particles or quadrature
points around the current crack tip.
The crack growth algorithm in 3D shell structures presented
here is designed for through-thickness cracks, which can be
accomplished by the modification of the local connectivity map
of specified particles that are identified by using geometric inter-
ception test between the line segment (Fig. 2(a)) and the triangle
surface element (Fig. 2(b)). In practice, since the triangle element
is composed of triangle facets, we can test the facets one by one,
eventually the meshfree re-interpolation update can be proceed
as we sort out visibility relations among all neighboring particles
B. Ren, S. Li / International Journal of Solids and Structures 49 (2012) 2373–2393
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