An adaptive thermo-mechanical peridynamic model for fracture analysis in ceramics

A thermo-mechanical peridynamic model using adaptive grid refinement is developed to investigate crack propagation in ceramics. Compared to a standard peridynamic model, using uniform grid, this approach allows to increase the resolution of analysis only in the critical zones. The performance of this approach in solving 2D thermo-elastic problems is examined and then it is applied to study the fracture of a ceramic disk under central thermal shock. Finally, the proposed approach is adopted to investigate thermal shock in thin rectangular and circular slabs. The accuracy of the method is evaluated by comparing its numerical results with those obtained by applying the finite element method (FEM), a standard peridynamic approach or with experimental data available in the literature. A proper agreement is achieved at a smaller computational cost.