Simulation of Primary Fracture Propagation around Compressive Cavity with the Extended Finite Element Method

The fracture distribution around circular cavities has been widely observed in experiments and well documented in literature from 1980. Most of the works are based on experiments' results, which cost considerable time and money. With varied numerical methods developed more and more researcher employ numerical experiments on computers instead of physical experiments. Firstly, the nodal enrichment functions for Extended Finite Element Method in conjunction with additional degrees are presented. Moreover, we describe the cohesive segments method, which is followed by the damage initiation and evolution laws. In the last a borehole numerical model is built up and the simulation results of the primary fracture propagation are presented.