A novel triangular boundary crack front element for 3D crack problems based on 8-node serendipity element.

This paper developed a novel 6-node triangular boundary crack front element for 3D crack problems. The developed element method was constructed based on an 8-node serendipity element and a distance function that defines the distance from arbitrary point inside the element to the crack front. The specially constructed shape function captures the square-root asymptotic behavior of the distribution of the displacement nearby the crack front. In order to employ the crack front element in the dual boundary element method, conversion from conforming triangular crack front elements to non-conforming triangular ones was performed through a matrix transformation. In the implementation of dual boundary element method, a displacement extrapolation method is adopted to compute the stress intensity factor at the crack front. Finally, three examples were presented to verify the efficiency of our proposed crack front element. In all the numerical examples, the presented crack front element exhibits high accuracy and efficiency in the examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]