A fracture model to study the effect of specimen size on dynamic energy release rates

The aim of this research was to simulate the ability of a material to transfer energy to the tip of a rapidly propagating crack when varying the specimen geometry and other factors. For this study, a distributed mass spring model was used which could be hosted on a Personal Computer (PC) of the type now available in most fracture laboratories to capture and process experimental data. The distributed mass spring model was chosen because it was easy to reconfigure for different studies. Also, it could produce the required data in the same format as more powerful FE models and at a quality not dramatically less than FE models. A most useful feature of the model was the good visibility of the fracture processes it was able to represent.