Evaluation of the amount of crack growth in 2D LEFM problems

This work proposes an algorithm for the evaluation of the amount of crack growth in two-dimensional problems of linear elastic fracture mechanics. The method is based on the energetic formulation of the coupled displacement–crack propagation problem defined by Nguyen et al. in 1990 in order to study the stability of crack growth in elastic fracture. To avoid the remeshing usually needed for modelling crack growth, a PUFEM model is utilized. The proposed algorithm is valid for stable rectilinear crack growth in LEFM but it can be extended to evaluate stable curvilinear crack growth in materials showing dissipative deformations.