Applications of bond-based cohesive peridynamics method (CPDM) to simulate inelastic fracture of stiffened plates in ship hull structures

Abstract

In this work, we utilize a non-local bond-based cohesive peridynamics method (CPDM) that is recently developed in Han et al. (2022) to model and simulate crack growth and crack propagation in stiffened plates, and to predict inelastic fracture processes in extensively-used stiffened plates in ship hull structures.The bond-based cohesive peridynamics method has both normal and tangential components in the bond force density, which allow for capturing of inelastic fracture processes under large deformation, and it is capable of the description of complex nonlinear material constitutive behaviors.By doing so, we have systematically simulated the fracture of stiffened plates with different types of stiffeners, such as rectangular, I-shaped, and L-shaped. Moreover, we also studied the strength effects of different sizes, layouts, and shapes of stiffeners on the fracture of plates. In specific, we calculated the structure stress intensity factors for various stiffened plate structures and study the crack arrest effect for various types of stiffeners on the hull structures. The numerical results demonstrate that bond-based cohesive peridynamics provides an accurate and reliable modeling and simulation tool for studying the structural failure mechanism of ship hull structures and predicting crack growth in stiffened plates.