Three Dimensional CS-FEM Phase-Field Modeling Technique for Brittle Fracture in Elastic Solids

Abstract

The cell based smoothed finite element method (CS-FEM) was integrated with the phase-field technique to model brittle fracture in 3D elastic solids. The CS-FEM was used to model the mechanics behavior and the phase-field method was used for diffuse fracture modeling technique where the damage in a system was quantified by a scalar variable. The integrated CS-FEM phase-field approach provides an efficient technique to model complex crack topologies in three dimensions. The detailed formulation of our combined method is provided. It was implemented in the commercial software ABAQUS using its user-element (UEL) and user-material (UMAT) subroutines. The coupled system of equations were solved in a staggered fashion using the in-built non-linear Newton–Raphson solver in ABAQUS. Eight node hexahedral (H8) elements with eight smoothing domains were coded in CS-FEM. Several representative numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the capability of the method. We also discuss some of its limitations.