Three-dimensional crack growth with hp-generalized finite element and face offsetting methods

A coupling between the hp-version of the generalized finite element method (hp-GFEM) and the face offsetting method (FOM) for crack growth simulations is presented. In the proposed GFEM, adaptive surface meshes composed of triangles are utilized to explicitly represent complex three-dimensional (3-D) crack surfaces. By applying the hp-GFEM at each crack growth step, high-order approximations on locally refined meshes are automatically created in complex 3-D domains while preserving the aspect ratio of elements, regardless of crack geometry. The FOM is applied to track the evolution of the crack front in the explicit crack surface representation. The FOM provides geometrically feasible crack front descriptions based on hp-GFEM solutions. The coupling of hp-GFEM and FOM allows the simulation of arbitrary crack growth with concave crack fronts independent of the volume mesh. Numerical simulations illustrate the robustness and accuracy of the proposed methodology.