Fracture propagation, especially for fractures emanating from inclined wellbores and closed natural fracture often involves Mode I, Mode II and at times Mode III fracture pattern. When an embedded inclined 3D fracture is subjected to compression, the fracture tips are restrained by the surrounding materials so that it does not propagates as predicted by 2D fracture models. In this paper, threed...

A two-dimensional numerical model of microstructural e ects in brittle fracture is presented, with an aim towards the understanding of toughening mechanisms in polycrystalline materials such as ceramics. Quasi-static crack propagation is modelled using the extended nite element method (X-FEM) and microstructures are simulated within the framework of the Potts model for grain growth. In the X-FE...

For years, “improving business processes” has been and is the primary business priority of IT. In business process management (BPM), common criteria to evaluate the improvement of a process are time, costs, customer satisfaction and output quality. In contrast, the management of companies focuses on increasing the company’s value, using a value-based management approach, which is hard to be lin...

This paper discusses the use of fracture mechanics for the microstructure tailoring of a fiber reinforced Engineered Cementitious Composite (ECC) to achieve extreme tensile ductility at the composite scale. It demonstrates that fracture mechanics applied to control fracture phenomena at the micro and meso material scales can lead to suppression of fracture failure at the macro structural scale....

Variational phase-field methods have been shown powerful for the modeling of complex crack propagation without a priori knowledge path or ad hoc criteria. However, models suffer from their energy functional being non-linear and non-convex, while requiring very fine mesh to capture damage gradient. This implies high computational cost, limiting concrete engineering applications method. In this w...

In this work, the mechanism for fracture of brittle substances such as rocks under a uniform normal tension is considered. The oriented straight micro-cracks are mostly created in all the polycrystalline materials resulting from the stress concentrations. The present work focuses on the interactions of the pre-existing micro-cracks, which can grow and propagate within a rock-like specimen. The ...

Crack growth analysis has remained one of the challenging problems in the fracture mechanics of structures. On the other hand, the fatigue crack growth is a common phenomenon in the components of structures like airplanes, navies and fluid storages where the fracture due to crack should be considered in the design of these structures. In this paper, the finite volume method (FVM) is extended fo...

The phase field paradigm, in combination with a suitable variational structure, has opened path for using Griffith’s energy balance to predict the fracture of solids. These so-called methods have gained significant popularity over past decade, and are now part commercial finite element packages engineering fitness- for-service assessments. Crack paths can be predicted, arbitrary geometries dime...