Discontinuous cellular automaton method for crack growth analysis without remeshing

A numerical technical of discontinuous cellular automaton method for crack growth analysis without remeshing is developed. In this method, the level set method is employed to track the crack location and its growth path, where the level set functions and calculation grids are independent, so no explicit meshing for crack surface and no remeshing for crack growth are needed. Then, the discontinuous enrichment shape functions which are enriched by the Heaviside function and the exact near-tip asymptotic field functions are constructed to model the discontinuity of cracks. Finally, a discontinuous cellular automaton theory is proposed, which are composed of cell, neighborhood and updating rules for discontinuous case. There is an advantage that the calculation is only applied on local cell, so no assembled stiffness matrix but only cell stiffness is needed, which can overcome the stiffness matrix assembling difficulty caused by unequal degrees of nodal freedom for different cells, and much easier to consider the local properties of cells. Besides, the present method requires much less computer memory than that of XFEM because of it local property. Combined level set method, the discontinuous enrichment shape functions and discontinuous cellular automaton theory, the discontinuous cellular automaton method is proposed, which can conveniently achieve the analysis from continuity to discontinuity. Numerical examples are given to illustrate that the present method is effective, and can be further extended into practical engineering. (C) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.