Conducting crack progration on sample with a hole in the middle of the crack path

[zakari]

Hello

I am trying to simulate a 2D brittle material undergoing a tensile test. I am using xfem crack growth to simulate this failure. However I have introduced a hole in the material in line with its crack path. I use quad advancing front meshing and run multiple tests with finer and finer mesh to try to get a convergence of the results. However when the sample's crack growth reaches the defect, the sample no longer complete fails. Increasing the mesh has the crack reach the opposite end of the sample but not completely fail. The resulting step time never changes and the calculations of the sample never move past a certain point even after 10,000 increments and a force is still acting on the sample.

Any suggestions as to what can be done to induce complete failure of the sample? Is it possible that the element deletion is not functioning properly after the crack reaches the defect? Is there any examples of abaqus being used to direct crack growth to a defect and see the effect of the hole on the crack? I have not been able to find any examples of this type of case and instead the crack path is usually directed directed across a sample without any defect in its path.

I have also linked some images to show some of the things of what has happened.

https://i.imgur.com/dEwoMlq.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/AkEDW1H.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/cWpdLoM.jpg

Thank you

 

[FEA way]

Crack propagation analysis might be difficult to fully converge (up to the point when the sample breaks). What you can do is enable automatic stabilization in step settings, add damage stabilization and (if you haven’t done this alread) adjust advanced solver settings - allow discontinuous analysis and increase the number of cutbacks I_A.

Check this thread for more details:

https://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=456415