PARAMETER AND INTERACTION STUDY OF EDGE CRACK PROBLEM USING MESHFREE METHOD

In this work, element free Galerkin method (EFGM) has been used to obtain the solution of edge crack problem under mechanical loads as it provides a versatile technique to model static as well as moving crack problems without any requirement of remeshing. At first, some techniques are presented for enriching the EFG approximations near the crack tip such as extrinsic and intrinsic enrichment. Extrinsic enrichment involves the addition of solution form to the trial function, whereas the EFG basis is expanded to include few terms from crack tip solution in intrinsic enrichment. Apart from enrichment techniques, four basic techniques of smoothing meshless approximations near nonconvex boundaries are also presented such as diffraction, transparency, see through and wedge model. These techniques are then used for the parameteric analysis of an edge crack problem under mode- 1 loading and results obtained using different approaches are compared with each other as well as with exact solution. Among these techniques, the extrinsic PU enrichment technique was found to be more accurate as compared to other approaches. Extrinsic PU enrichment technique has also been used for the analysis of a shear edge crack problem. In all these techniques, the value of mode- 1 stress intensity factor and mode- 2 stress intensity factor has been evaluated by interaction integral approach. Effect of crack orientation is also studied for different cases.