A mixed interface finite element for cohesive zone models

Abstract The phenomena of crack initiation, propagation and ultimate fracture are studied here under the following assumptions: (i) the crack law is modelled by means of a cohesive zone model and (ii) the crack paths are postulated a priori. In this context, a variational formulation is proposed which relies on an augmented Lagrangian. A mixed interface finite element is introduced to discretise the crack paths, the degrees of freedom of which consist in the displacement on both crack lips and the density of cohesive forces. This enables an exact treatment of multi-valued cohesive laws (e.g. initial adhesion, contact conditions, possible rigid unloading, etc.), without penalty regularisation. A special attention is paid to the convergence with mesh-refinement, i.e. the well-posedness of the problem, on the basis of theoretical results of contact mechanics and some complementary numerical investigations. Fulfilment of the LBB condition is the key factor to gain the desired properties. Moreover, it is shown that the integration of the constitutive law admits a unique solution as soon as some condition on the augmented Lagrangian is enforced. Finally, a 3D simulation shows the applicability to practical engineer problems, including in particular the robustness of the formulation and its compatibility with classical solution algorithms (Newton method, line-search, path-following techniques).