Fracture and Fatigue Analyses of Cracked Structures Using the Iterative Method

Abstract

It is a quite challenging subject to efficiently perform fracture and fatigue analyses for complex structures with cracks in engineering. To precisely and efficiently study crack problems in practical engineering, an iterative method is developed in this study. The overall structure which contains no crack is analyzed by the traditional finite element method (FEM), and the crack itself is analyzed using analytical solution or other numerical solutions which are effective and efficient for solving crack problems. An iteration is carried out between the two abovementioned solutions, and the original crack problem could be solved based on the superposition principle. Several typical crack problems are studied using the present method, showing very high precision and efficiency of this method when making fracture and fatigue analyses of structures.