A CONCURRENT MULTISCALE APPROACH FOR FRACTURING OF BRITTLE COMPOSITES BASED ON THE SUPERPOSITION-BASED PHASE FIELD MODEL

A concurrent multiscale approach for phase field modeling of fracture is developed to numerically investigate the fracture mechanisms of heterogeneous materials. By this approach the problem domain is divided into macroscopic and mesoscale subdomains where the cracks are expected to propagate. A phase field fracture model in the mesoscale subdomain is employed to describe the crack initiation and propagation process. Taking advantage of the s-version of the finite element method, the two subdomains are discretized independently with finite elements, where the coarse mesh in the macrodomain is employed to resolve the overall behavior, while the fine mesh in the mesoscale domain is aimed at resolving the crack propagation path. Several numerical examples are conducted to study the performance of the method.