Fatigue Crack Growth Simulation Using S-version FEM

Fatigue crack growth under mixed mode loading conditions is simulated using S-FEM. By using S-FEM technique, only local mesh should be remeshed and it becomes easy to simulate crack growth. By combining with re-meshing technique, local mesh is re-meshed automatically, and curved crack path is modeled easily. Plural fatigue crack problem is solved by this technique. For two through crack problems, crack coalescence condition is proposed by JSME standard. By simulating this problem by S-FEM, it is shown that thid criterion depends on initial crack size. Then more than 160 cases are simulated by changing several parameters. Results are summarized by normalized form, and new criterion is proposed.