Numerical Simulations of Dynamic Fracture in Thin Shell Structures

Numerical simulations Of large deformation dynamic fracture In thin shell structures Using 3-D meshfree method is presented. Due to the smoothness of the meshfree shape functions, they are well suited to simulate large deformation of thin Shell structures while avoiding, ill-conditioning as well as stiffening in numerical computations. Dynamic fracture is modeled by simple criterion, i.e. removing connectivity between adjacent nodes once a fracture criterion is met. The main advantage of such 3-D meshfree continuum approach is its simplicity ill both formulation and implementation as compared to shell theory approach, or degenerated continuum approach. Moreover, it is believed that the accuracy of the computation may increase because Of using 3-D exact formulation.