Phase-field modeling of brittle fracture along the thickness direction of plates and shells

The prediction of fracture in thin-walled structures is decisive for a wide range of applications. Modeling methods such as the phase-field method usually consider cracks to be constant over the thickness which, especially in load cases involving bending, is an imperfect approximation. In this contribution, fracture phenomena along the thickness direction of structural elements (plates or shells) are addressed with a phase-field modeling approach. For this purpose, a new, so called "mixed-dimensional" model is introduced, which combines structural elements representing the displacement field in the two-dimensional shell midsurface with continuum elements describing a crack phase-field in the three-dimensional solid space. The proposed model uses two separate finite element discretizations, where the transfer of variables between the coupled two- and three-dimensional fields is performed at the integration points which in turn need to have corresponding geometric locations. The governing equations of the proposed mixed-dimensional model are deduced in a consistent manner from a total energy functional with them also being compared to existing standard models. The resulting model has the advantage of a reduced computational effort due to the structural elements while still being able to accurately model arbitrary through-thickness crack evolutions as well as partly along the thickness broken shells due to the continuum elements. Amongst others, the higher accuracy as well as the numerical efficiency of the proposed model are tested and validated by comparing simulation results of the new model to those obtained by standard models using numerous representative examples.