Study on fracture of hyperelastic Kirchhoff-Love plates and shells by phase field method

Thin walled structures such as plates and shells are widely used in many engineering fields. To Predict its fracture behavior is of great significance for integrity design and strength evaluation of engineering structures. Numerical simulation of the fracture behavior of hyperelastic plates and shells is a challenge due to complex kinematic description, hyperelastic constitutive relationship, geometric nonlinearity and the degradation on elastic parameter caused by fracture damage. Combining Kirchhoff Love (K-L) shell theory with the fracture phase field method, and numerically discretizing the first and second order partial derivatives of displacement field and phase field by using T-splines and meeting the requirements of K-L plate and shell theory for the C1 continuity of the shape function, a model for the isogeometric analysis numerical formulation of the phase field fracture in hyperelastic K-L plates and shells is established. The fracture failure behavior of hyperelastic K-L plates and shells under the uniform load and displacement load is simulated, and the effect of the Gaussian curvature on the fracture behavior of hyperelastic K-L shells is studied. The simulation results show that the present numerical scheme can effectively capture the complex crack propagation path of plates and shells under the uniform load, and the displacement field can effectively reflect the crack distribution of materials. The thin shell with negative Gaussian curvature shows the excellent fracture performance under the internal pressure, and can withstand the greater internal pressure. ©2024 Journal of Northwestern Polytechnical University.