Crack Growth Simulation in Corrugated Plate Using XFEM

Abstract

Corrugated plates play an important role in manymodern constructions applications. Being the main componentslike piles or stiffeners means they quite often subjected to highlevels of stresses. The presence of flaw or crack in the structureof loaded corrugated plate may lead to the situation of crackgrowth and then catastrophic failure. Extended Finite ElementMethod is used to avoid remeshing during crack growthsimulation. In order to characterize crack growth in a corrugated plate, two methods were used which are virtualcrack closure method and cohesive segments method. Two casestudies were investigated in this study. In the first case, thematerial behavior is assumed to be linear elastic, while in thesecond one the material behavior is assumed to be elastic-plastic.The results obtained using the two methods showed a verygood agreement both in linear elastic and elastic-plastic cases.