A Local to Global (L2G) Finite Element Method for Efficient and Robust Analysis of Arbitrary Cracking in 2D Solids

P This paper presents and validates a new local to global (L2G) FEM approach that can analyze multiple, interactive fracture processes in 2D solids with improved numerical efficiency robustness. The method features: 1) forming problems for individual cracks; 2) parallel solving returning solutions as part of the trial solution iteration. It has been demonstrated analytically (through simple 1D problem) numerically several benchmarking examples) that, proposed substantially improve robustness process significantly reduce costly iteration convergence. improvement is up 20 ∼ 40% mildly unstable problems. For severely crack initiation propagation, be more significant. readily applicable other popular methods such extended (X-FEM), Augmented (A-FEM) Phantom-node (PNM).