A quasi-static crack propagation simulation based on shape-free hybrid stress-function finite elements with simple remeshing

In this paper, a new shape-free multi-node singular hybrid stress-function (HSF) element and a shape-free 8-node plane HSF element proposed recently are employed to simulate the quasi-static 2D crack propagation problem. Compared with other well-known methods, such new scheme exhibits four advantages: (i) for the singular element, the shape and the number of nodes can be flexibly adjusted as required; (ii) high precision for stress intensity factors (SIF) can be obtained due to the advantages of the HSF method; (iii) only simple remeshing with a very coarse mesh is needed for each simulation step; (iv) unstructured mesh containing extremely distorted elements can be used without losing precision. It demonstrates that the proposed scheme is an effective technique for dealing with crack propagation problems.