Simulations of instability in dynamic fracture by the cracking particles method

✍ Scribed by Timon Rabczuk; Jeong-Hoon Song; Ted Belytschko

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 791 KB
• Volume: 76
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0013-7944
• DOI: 10.1016/j.engfracmech.2008.06.002

✦ Synopsis

Crack instabilities and the phenomenon of crack speed saturation in a brittle material (PMMA) are studied with a meshfree cracking particle method. We reproduce the experimental observation that the computed terminal crack speeds attained in PMMA specimens are substantially lower than the Rayleigh wave speed; the computed crack speeds agree quite well with the reported experimental results. We also replicate repetitive microcrack branching along with the increased rate of energy dissipation after attainment of a critical crack speed, even in the absence of microstructural defects. We show that the presence of microdefects changes the response only a little. The computations reproduce many of the salient features of experimental observations.