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 re-meshed and it becomes easy to simulate crack growth. By combining with auto-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 parallel crack problem, criteria of crack coalescence are proposed. By simulating this problem by S-FEM, it is verified these criteria are conservative ones.