An efficient enrichment strategy for modeling stress singularities in isotropic composite materials with X-FEM technique

Abstract

An efficient enrichment strategy is presented for modeling stress singularities in multi-material problems and crack-tips terminating at a bi-material interface within the X-FEM framework. The eigen-function expansion method is employed to evaluate eigen-values and asymptotic fields around singular points. The generalized stress intensity factors are defined on the basis of direct and interaction integral techniques. Numerical examples are solved for different types of eigen-values, and the convergence study is performed to investigate the accuracy of the proposed enrichment strategy. The results indicate that the proposed method has superior accuracy, higher convergence rate and lower condition numbers over the other methods.