FORMULATION AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A SINGULAR ANISOTROPIC FINITE-ELEMENT

The formulation and implementation of a singular finite element for analyzing homogeneous anisotropic materials is presented in this paper. Lekhnitskii's stress function method is used to formulate the boundary value problem with the stress function expressed as a Laurent series. The development of the element stiffness matrix and the method of integrating the element to conventional displacement based finite element programs is shown. The stiffness matrix generation is based on a least squares collocation technique to satisfy displacement continuity boundary conditions at the element interface. Implementation of the element is demonstrated for cracked anisotropic materials subjected to inplane loading. Center cracked, on and off-axis coupons under tensile loading are analyzed using the element. It is shown that the stress distributions and intensity factors compare well with those obtained using other methods.