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A phase-field fracture model for brittle anisotropic materials

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Abstract

Anisotropy is inherent in many materials, either because of the manufacturing process, or due to their microstructure, and can markedly influence the failure behavior. Anisotropic materials obviously possess both anisotropic elasticity and anisotropic fracture surface energy. Phase-field methods are elegant and mathematically well-grounded, and have become popular for simulating isotropic and anisotropic brittle fracture. Here, we developed a variational phase-field model for strongly anisotropic fracture, which accounts for the anisotropy both in elastic strain energy and in fracture surface energy, and the asymmetric behavior of cracks in traction and in compression. We implement numerically our higher-order phase-field model with mixed finite element, inspired by formulations for plate/shell elements, where similar continuity requirements exist. For strongly anisotropic materials, as reported in the recent experiments, one could obtain several crack propagation directions for a given loading configuration, depending on imperfections of the initial crack. From an energy point of view, the selection of crack propagation direction is dictated by local principle of the generalized maximum energy release rate. Herein, for the first time we examine numerically this local principle, reproduce the crack behaviors observed in recent experiments. Numerical simulations exhibit all the features of strongly anisotropic fracture.

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Notes

  1. https://github.com/bin-mech/anisotropic_phase-field_fracture

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Guangdong Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Shantou, 515063, China

    Zhiheng Luo & Nan Wang

  2. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, 320003, Israel

    Zhiheng Luo

  3. Key Laboratory of Ministry of Education on Safe Mining of Deep Metal Mines, College of Resources and Civil Engineering, Northeastern University, Shenyang, 110819, China

    Lin Chen

  4. Department of Mechanical Engineering,Guangdong Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Shantou, 515063, China

    Bin Li

  5. Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Materials and Technologies for Energy Conversion, Shantou, 515063, China

    Nan Wang & Bin Li

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  1. Zhiheng Luo
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  2. Lin Chen
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  3. Nan Wang
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  4. Bin Li
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Correspondence to Bin Li.

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Luo, Z., Chen, L., Wang, N. et al. A phase-field fracture model for brittle anisotropic materials. Comput Mech 70, 931–943 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00466-022-02192-9

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