THE APPLICATION OF 2D ELASTIC STOCHASTIC FINITE-ELEMENT METHOD IN THEFIELD OF FRACTURE-MECHANICS

In this present paper the stochastic finite element method (SFEM) is l ed into the field of fracture mechanics and the cracked structures, wi th random material properties and/or geometric parameters are analyzed by the stochastic finite element method. The calculating formulae for the mean and variance values of the J-integral are discussed leading to an effective method for the probabilistic safety assessment of crac ked structures. Meanwhile some elastic problems are solved by this met hod and the numerical examples demonstrate that this method is appropr iate for solving engineering problems and the related computer program developed in this paper has sufficient precision. (C) 1997 Elsevier S cience Ltd.