A phase-field damage model with micro inertia effect for the dynamic fracture of quasi-brittle solids

Abstract

Being able to deal with complex crack patterns like branching, merging and fragmentation, phase-field models are promising in the computational modeling of dynamic fracture in solids. In order to account for the rate-dependent effect of quasi-brittle solids under high-rate loading, in this work we address a phase-field damage model for dynamic fracture by incorporate the micro inertia into the recently proposed unified phase-field damage theory. The macroscopic and microscopic balance equations are derived from Hamilton’s principle of least action and then solved by the alternate minimization solver. Several representative numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the capability of the proposed model to capture the failure process of brittle/quasi-brittle solids under dynamic loading scenarios. Ideal agreements are achieved against available experimental results and previous reports. In particular, the rate-dependence of brittle/quasi-brittle solids can be well captured.