3D curved cracks investigation on nonhomogeneous materials using an interaction integral method

A numerical procedure is investigated for the evaluation of 3D curved non-planar crack propagation in nonhomogeneous materials thermal loading. A modified domain-independent interaction energy integral[1] with a zero-mean stress auxiliary field[3] is employed to deal with the interface with a discontinuous thermal expansion coefficient while extracting mixed-mode thermal stress intensity factors (TSIFs). The influence of graded thermal and mechanical properties on mixed mode stress intensity factors (SIFs) is explored in detail. The extended finite element method (XFEM) is combined to investigate several representative fracture problems. A patch is introduced to remove the crack-tip enrichment and instead employ a patched mesh in the modeling.