An Abaqus plug-in to simulate fatigue crack growth

Fatigue crack propagation is an important consideration in evaluating the design life of engineering components, especially energy and transport industries. Despite its importance, fatigue analyses are not usually supported by commercial Finite Element (FE) codes; fact, most FE codes require addition costly plug-ins to perform growth simulations. Therefore, this paper introduces a new, freely distributed plug-in simulate with code Abaqus. The includes five different models relies on extended method propagation. limited 2D analyses, but covers all necessary steps for simulations, from creating geometry job submission post-processing. implementation validated comparing predictions analytical experimental results. Finally, we hope that simplicity fact it will make useful simulation tool industrial, research educational purposes.