Effectiveness of two-dimensional versatile program based on body force method and its application to crack problems

Body force method (BFM) was originally proposed in 1967 as a general technique for the stress analysis of notch and crack problems. The concept of BFM is to express the stress fields of elastic problems by means of superposition of point force solutions. BFM has been provided a number of highly accurate solutions of practical problems by developing special programs suitable for individual problems. In 1990, a versatile program based on BFM for general 2D problems was developed by considering the research fruits obtained until then. Due to the exploitation of this versatile program, it became possible to obtain highly accurate solutions of various 2D elastic problems even by using standard PCs. This paper describes how useful the versatile program based on the BFM is. As numerical examples, several solutions of selected problems including crack propagation/coalescence analysis are demonstrated.