Fractal-Like Finite Element Method and Strain Energy Approach for Computational Modelling and Analysis of Geometrically V-Notched Plate

The fractal-like finite element method (FFEM) is developed to compute stress intensity factors (SIFs) for isotropic homogeneous and bi-material V-notched plates. The method is semi-analytical, because analytical expressions of the displacement fields are used as global interpolation functions (GIFs) to carry out a transformation of the nodal displacements within a singular region to a small set of generalised coordinates. The concept of the GIFs in reducing the number of unknowns is similar to the concept of the local interpolation functions of a finite element. Therefore, the singularity at a notch-tip is modelled accurately in the FFEM using a few unknowns, leading to reduction of the computational cost.The analytical expressions of displacements and stresses around a notch tip are derived for different cases of notch problems: in-plane (modes I and II) conditions and out-of-plane (mode III) conditions for isotropic and bi-material notches. These expressions, which are eigenfunction series expansions, are then incorporated into the FFEM to carry out the transformation of the displacements of the singular nodes and to compute the notch SIFs directly without the need for post-processing. Different numerical examples of notch problems are presented and results are compared to available published results and solutions obtained by using other numerical methods.A strain energy approach (SEA) is also developed to extract the notch SIFs from finite element (FE) solutions. The approach is based on the strain energy of a control volume around the notch-tip. The strain energy may be computed using commercial FE packages, which are only capable of computing SIFs for crack problems and not for notch problems. Therefore, this approach is a strong tool for enabling analysts to compute notch SIFs using current commercial FE packages. This approach is developed for comparison of the FFEM results for notch problems where available published results are scarce especially for the bi-material notch cases.A very good agreement between the SEA results and the FFEM results is illustrated. In addition, the accuracy of the results of both procedures is shown to be very good compared to the available results in the literature. Therefore, the FFEM as a stand-alone procedure and the SEA as a post-processing technique, developed in this research, are proved to be very accurate and reliable numerical tools for computing the SIFs of a general notch in isotropic homogeneous and bi-material plates.