New Methods for Discontinuity and Crack Modeling in EFG

A new method for modeling discontinuities, such as cracks, in the element free Galerkin method is presented. A jump function is used for the displacement discontinuity along the crack faces and the Westergard’s solution enrichment near the crack tip. These enrichments, being extrinsic, can be limited only to the nodes surrounding the crack. The method is coupled to a new vector level set method [1] so with this approach only nodal data are used to describe the crack, no geometrical entity is introduced for the crack trajectory, and no partial differential equations need be solved to update the level sets.