SIMULATING CRACK CLOSURE WITH COHESIVE ZONE ELEMENTS DURING CRACK GROWTH

Closure and the cohesive effect at crack fronts/surfaces play key roles in simulating crack growth. In this paper, fracture analysis method has been coupled with finite element remeshing techniques to automatically insert cohesive zone element on crack surfaces when cracks propagate, and then multiple cohesive zone models are compared and discussed. This feature has been implemented in Ansys Mechanical MAPDL so that customers are capable of accurately analysing crack growth in a more general background.
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