A Coupled Cohesive and XFEM for 3-D Delamination Onset and Growth Prediction

Abstract

This paper presents an automatic delamination onset and growth prediction toolkit for Abaqus (XFA3D) based on the eXtended Finite Element Method (XFEM). A 3D XFEM solid element with an interface interaction and a partially bonded cohesive interface element have been developed and implemented in Abaqus via its user-defined subroutines. To efficiently characterize a moving crack front and update its levelset description, a narrow band based fast marching method is employed to track the arbitrary delamination crack at its onset and growth stage without user intervention and remeshing. A combination of the levelset based crack front description with the cohesive interface modeling provides an attractive feature in computing the energy release rate along an arbitrary crack front via a virtual crack closure technique (VCCT). In addition, the use of a sub-domain integration within a partially bonded cohesive element offers significant improvement in solution accuracy and numerical stability, as compared to conventional cohesive elements using either Gaussian Integration (GI) or New-Cotes Integration (NCI). The validity and applicability of the XFA3D module for delamination onset and growth prediction are demonstrated via numerical examples at coupon and component levels.