USE OF DISCONTINUOUS BOUNDARY ELEMENTS FOR FRACTURE-MECHANICS ANALYSIS

The boundary element method (BEM) has long been considered a suitable technique for the analysis of fracture mechanics problems. While research is being published showing how advanced BEM formulations can reduce the data preparation time and produce accurate fracture results, it is still very simple to use more conventional direct boundary element methods to find accurate stress intensity factors very quickly and easily. This is made possible with discontinuous elements. This paper describes modeling and post-processing techniques which can assist the designer in this process. The results are compared against the charts published by Rooke & Cartwright, and show an excellent agreement. The method offers a very quick and accurate method of predicting fracture properties of real-life, non-standard geometries.