CIPFAR: A 3D unified numerical framework for the modeling of ductile fracture based on the phase field model and adaptive remeshing

Abstract

In this paper, a general numerical framework for the modeling of ductile fracture in 3D meshes is introduced. The strategy is inspired from the phase field model and adaptive remeshing tools. The phase field model was introduced as a continuous model for predicting the initiation and propagation of cracks in materials. However, the model has a limitation on the choice of the characteristic length scale that controls the width of the cracked region. This work contributes to the full modeling of transition between the continuous damage using the phase field model to the discontinuous crack initiation and propagation within a unified numerical framework called CIPFAR. The contributions of the work include: (i). identification of the crack surface on arbitrary mesh topologies; (ii). intersection by a Sequence Agnostic Partitioning strategy which is introduced to adapt the mesh to the computed crack surface; (iii). a nodal duplication by virtual non-manifold patch repair to open the mesh. Combining all the mentioned algorithms with adaptive remeshing allows modeling the initiation and propagation of cracks in materials efficiently. Different numerical examples are presented to prove the ability of the developed algorithm to model ductile fracture cases without the need to predefine the crack initiation region.