AN ARBITRARY LAGRANGIAN DESCRIPTION OF 2D AND 3D CRACKED STRUCTURES

An arbitrary Lagrangian description is proposed for the moving crack a nalysis. The method is based on the use of a mapping of the moving dom ain to the initial stationary one (boundaries, shape and conditions ma y be very general). In the framework of elasticity, the energy release rate is expressed as surface integrals on the fixed domain, explicitl y related to the current crack growth (or crack shape in 3D) parameter . Numerical results of an energy release rate analysis are presented f or a large range of 2D and 3D crack extension. The advantages of this method are: firstly, it avoids remeshing or introducing special numeri cal parameters such as relaxation forces to simulate the crack growth or performing parametric analysis for different crack shape; secondly, to obtain exact derivatives of the potential energy.