Brian Phung recently implemented a flexible numerical framework to simulate arbitrary 3D crack growth in heterogeneous materials. The framework involves adaptive remeshing on a voxel-based geometrical domain.  Due to its modularity, the crack representation is de-coupled from the crack-evolution rule and material constitutive model (in the uncracked region), providing significant flexibility to investigate new or existing crack-growth criteria. The work has been published in the March 2019 issue of Engineering Fracture Mechanics. To download the article, click here or contact the MMM Lab.

This work is supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) Young Investigator Program Grant No. FA 9550-15-1-0172 and by the U.S. Air Force Summer Faculty Fellowship Program.

Phung and Spear, Engineering Fracture Mechanics, 2019.
Stress field shown for slices through the volume of a polycrystal with two interacting cracks.
Methodology for evaluating crack-growth criteria point-wise along an arbitrary 3D crack front.