An Overview of Fracture Mechanics with ANSYS

This paper reviewed the use of ANSYS finite element program in analyzing the engineering structures containing defects or cracks. It is provided a fracture mechanics module which is capable to model the crack tip efficiently. In studying the cracks in elastic medium, linear elastic fracture mechanics (LEFM) is used where the crack-driving force called stress intensity factor, J -integral, energy release rate is provided as indicators of failure. There are three approaches can be used to calculate the stress intensity factors (SIF) such as Displacement Extrapolation Method (DEM) and Interaction Integral Method (IIM). Energy Release Rate (ERR) is calculated using Virtual Crack Closure Technique (VCCT) then it is converted to SIF. Based on the comparison, it is found that DEM, VCCT and J -integral techniques produced the SIFs are almost closed to the results obtained from open literature. However, IIM method lead to under estimate the SIFs.