The Effect of the Traction Separation Law on the Results of Cohesive Zone Crack Propagation Analyses

• Published in: Key engineering materials 2003-01, Vol.251-252, p.313-318
• Main Authors: Scheider, Ingo, Brocks, Wolfgang
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1013-9826; 1662-9795; 1662-9795
• DOI: 10.4028/www.scientific.net/KEM.251-252.313

The cohesive model has found increasing interest and applications in the past 20 years due to its robustness, its small number of parameters and its broad range of possible applications. In addition, the crack extension is calculated using a local approach, which eliminates the problem of transferability. Numerical crack propagation analyses have been performed on fracture specimens with an elastic-plastic bulk material behaviour under pure mode I loading using different traction separation laws (TSL). The TSL defines the functional form of the tractions in dependence on separation distances within the cohesive interface elements. The study investigates whether full transferability holds for different fracture specimens independent of the TSL used. It is shown that the influence of the TSL on the results of the calculations is strong, and that the values of the cohesive parameters depend on the choice of that function. Simulations of different specimen geometries, C(T) and M(T), show that the transferability of the parameters from one TSL to another is not satisfied in general, since parameter sets (T0, *d0) which lead to similar results for one specimen, lead to different results for the other.