Simulation of Fatigue Fracture Path Prediction in Materials Containing Holes or Inclusions Using Moving Finite Element Method

Abstract

It is well known that approximately 70 to 80 percent of the failure accidents that occur in complex structures that have such holes are caused by the fatigue fracture. That is, we need to know fatigue fracture path to evaluate health. In this paper, we carried out fatigue fracture path prediction simulation containing multiple circular holes or inclusions in specimens. Furthermore the effect of their existence on crack growth was examined. The simulations were conducted using the moving finite element method based on Delaunay automatic triangulation, and the numerical result of the specimens containing multiple circular holes was compared with the experimental result. In the fatigue fracture path prediction simulation, Paris's law was used to decide crack propagation length Δa and local symmetry criterion was used to decide crack propagation direction.