Phase field modeling of quasi-static and dynamic crack propagation: COMSOL implementation and case studies

By Shuwei Zhou, Timon Rabczuk, Xiaoying Zhuang. Advances in Engineering Software, 2018

422 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract The phase-field model (PFM) represents the crack geometry in a diffusive way without introducing sharp discontinuities. This feature enables PFM to effectively model crack propagation compared with numerical methods based on discrete crack model, especially for complex crack patterns. Due to the involvement of “phased field”, phase-field method can be essentially treated a multifield problem even for pure mechanical problem. Therefore, it is supposed that the implementation of PFM based on a software developer that especially supports the solution of multifield problems should be more effective, simpler and more efficient than PFM implemented on a general finite element software. In this work, the authors aim to devise a simple and efficient implementation of phase-field model for the modelling of quasi-static and dynamic fracture in the general purpose commercial software developer, COMSOL Multiphysics. Notably only the tensile stress induced crack is accounted for crack evolution by using the decomposition of elastic strain energy. The width of the diffusive crack is controlled by a length-scale parameter. Equations that govern body motion and phase-field evolution are written into different modules in COMSOL, which are then coupled to a whole system to be solved. A staggered scheme is adopted to solve the coupled system and each module is solved sequentially during one time step. A number of 2D and 3D examples are tested to investigate the performance of the present implementation. Our simulations show good agreement with previous works, indicating the feasibility and validity of the COMSOL implementation of PFM.

Subfields: Computational Mechanics, Materials Chemistry, Mechanics of Materials

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5b3d358555daff4b241e8a7205fe179d65ccedaa

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Computational Mechanics

In Materials Chemistry

In Mechanics of Materials

Citations in the corpus

Phase-field modeling of fluid-driven dynamic cracking in porous media (2019, background): “In addition, crack branches are observed to highly related to crack speed [37].”