Dynamic brittle fracture with eigenerosion enhanced material point method

• Published in: International journal for numerical methods in engineering 2020-09, Vol.121 (17), p.3768-3794
• Main Authors: Zhang, Kun, Shen, Shui‐Long, Zhou, Annan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Brittle fracture; Brittle materials; Crack propagation; eigenerosion approach; Energy conservation; Energy release rate; Fracture mechanics; material point method; phantom‐node method
• ISSN: 0029-5981; 1097-0207
• DOI: 10.1002/nme.6381

Summary This article proposes an approach to resolve the dynamic fracture of brittle materials by incorporating eigenerosion into the material point method (MPM) framework. The eigenerosion approach links the crack propagation to energy conservation based on the variational theory of fracture mechanics. This idea closely resembles the conventional treatment for the phase‐field method. The major difference is that the effective energy release rate of each particle that controls the crack propagation is only calculated within its neighborhood domain for the eigenerosion approach. Because evaluation of the material's fracture behavior can be decoupled from the governing equations as a separate solution step, the eigenerosion scheme allows straightforward implementation into any standard MPM solver with minor modifications. In addition, a phantom‐node method is employed to handle the preexisting crack. With these settings, the proposed model can capture complex fracture behaviors. Several representative benchmark tests demonstrate the efficiency and validity of the proposed model.