Application of PDS–FEM to simulate dynamic crack propagation and supershear rupture

Dynamic crack propagation problems, including intersonic rupture, are simulated with two Hamiltonian based formulations of particle discretization scheme (PDS) FEM: the traditional displacement momentum form and the strain momentum form, for which consistent momentum conserving and symplectic integration schemes are derived. Numerical results are verified, and validated by comparing with photoelastic observations of a dynamic mode-I crack captured with a 1 Mfps camera. Both methods are successful in accurately reproducing the crack patterns observed in classical 2D and 3D dynamic rupture scenarios, as well as the near crack tip stress field during the propagation. The two methods are found to be numerically indifferentiable, although the displacement based method offers a significantly better computational performance. As a demonstrative application, we simulate the super-shear rupture in earthquakes, modeling the contact at the fault surface by a linear slip weakening friction law. The Burridge–Andrews mechanism naturally appears in the simulations, making the crack front jump from the sub-Rayleigh regime to the intersonic regime and propagate while producing shear Mach cones.