Modelling of stresses in a cracked sample

You'd have to be super-expert to know whether this a commercial tool can be applied to correctly investigate crack-tip stress-concentrations.
Undeterred, I produced these pretty pictures...

The sample is similar in shape to a "tensile" CTOD sample used for material testing, for evaluating fracture-toughness of materials. Increasing the amount of context information and data available to evaluate how well my simulations are doing...

2-D

Similar to previous

• is 2-D
• declare / constrain model to be plane-strain
• material properties match steel

The mesh

"open cracks" (in the mesh) literally reveals the modelled crack

Results. These displays show vastly exaggerated elastic deformation - so the nature of the elastic deformation can be visualised by the human viewer.

3-D

This is it - now modelling in full 3-D.

The modelled component now has finite size, so will have varying stresses along the "z" direction, as head to the middle of the sample, with increasing self-constraint (???).

2-D views of this 3-D model

(R. Smith, 17May2016)