A stable discontinuity-enriched finite element method for 3-D problems containing weak and strong discontinuities
J. Zhang (TU Delft - Computational Design and Mechanics)
Sanne J. van den Boom (TU Delft - Computational Design and Mechanics)
F. Van Keulen (TU Delft - Computational Design and Mechanics)
AM Aragon (TU Delft - Computational Design and Mechanics)
More Info
expand_more
Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.
Abstract
A new enriched finite element technique, named the Discontinuity-Enriched Finite Element Method (DE-FEM), was introduced recently for solving problems with both weak and strong discontinuities in 2-D. In this mesh-independent procedure, enriched degrees of freedom are added to new nodes collocated at the intersections between discontinuities and the sides of finite elements of the background mesh. In this work we extend DE-FEM to 3-D and describe in detail the implementation of a geometric engine capable of handling interactions between discontinuities and the background mesh. Several numerical examples in linear elastic fracture mechanics demonstrate the capability and performance of DE-FEM in handling discontinuities in a fully mesh-independent manner. We compare convergence properties and the ability to extract stress intensity factors with standard FEM. Most importantly, we show DE-FEM provides a stable formulation with regard to the condition number of the resulting system stiffness matrix.
help_outline