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Discrete element approach in brittle fracture mechanics

Ba Danh Le (Laboratory of Engineering Design, National Institute of Applied Sciences of Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France)
Georg Koval (Laboratory of Engineering Design, National Institute of Applied Sciences of Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France)
Cyrille Chazallon (Laboratory of Engineering Design, National Institute of Applied Sciences of Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France)

Engineering Computations

ISSN: 0264-4401

Article publication date: 22 February 2013

455

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to use the discrete element method (DEM) to model the fracture behaviour of brittle materials in 2D.

Design/methodology/approach

The material consists of a set of particles in contact with a close‐packed structure. It allows the derivation of an expression for the stress intensity factor as a function of the contact forces near the crack tip. A classical failure criterion, based on the material's toughness, is then adopted for the analysis of crack propagation, represented by the contact loss between particles.

Findings

The DEM approach is compared to two tensile cases (mode I); both presenting a monotonous convergence towards classical solutions for more precise discretization.

Originality/value

The paper proposes a DEM approach in fracture mechanics of isotropic brittle materials entirely compatible with continuous classical theory. Hence the toughness value is directly introduced as a parameter of the material without any previous calibration of the DEM.

Keywords

Citation

Danh Le, B., Koval, G. and Chazallon, C. (2013), "Discrete element approach in brittle fracture mechanics", Engineering Computations, Vol. 30 No. 2, pp. 263-276. https://doi.org/10.1108/02644401311304881

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2013, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

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