ABSTRACT: This study provides an analysis of the influence of underground CO2 storage on the effective stress field in a representative geological formation. Large scale finite element models are used to describe the injection process. For high injection rates, different material degradation mechanisms may be activated depending on initial conditions. The case of rock fracturing due to tensile ...

Concern over construction vibration-induced cracking has led to development of a new approach to vibration monitoring, an autonomous crack comparometer (ACC). This paper describes sensor performance and chronicles the first steps in the development of this concept, illustrated in Figure 1. A single sensor measures both weather-induced micrometer changes in crack width and those produced by habi...

The boundary element formulation for analysing interaction between a hole and multiple cracks in piezoelectric materials is presented. Using Green’s function for hole problems and variational principle, a boundary element model (BEM) for a 2-D thermopiezoelectric solid with cracks and holes has been developed and used to calculate stress intensity factors of the crack-hole problem. In BEM, the ...

Partition of unity enrichment techniques are developed for bimaterial interface cracks. A discontinuous function and the two-dimensional near-tip asymptotic displacement functions are added to the finite element approximation using the framework of partition of unity. This enables the domain to be modelled by finite elements without explicitly meshing the crack surfaces. The crack-tip enrichmen...

A software tool for automated crack onset and growth simulation based on the eXtended Finite Element Method (X-FEM) is developed. This XFA tool for the first time is able to simulate arbitrary crack growth or composite delamination without remeshing. The automated tool is integrated with Abaqus/Standard and Abaqus/CAE via the customization interfaces. It seamlessly works with the Commercial, Of...

Fluctuations in the crack tip structure should result in the release of elastic waves that propagate both into the bulk as well as along the surface. Ramanathan and Fisher (1997), and Morrisey and Rice (1998) examined such wave interactions in a series of increasingly sophisticated models. The possibility that in-plane and out-of-plane perturbations could persist along the crack surface, result...

Recent experiments revealed an exciting possibility of making nanowires by filling nanosacle cracks in a thin film. Exploration and practical application of the method would rely on the modeling capability to predict complex nanocracks and their geometries in heterogeneous films. This paper proposes a level set approach to investigate the formation of nanocrack patterns, which allows precise pr...

Polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) bone cement is a polymeric material that is widely used as a structural orthopedic material. However, it is not an ideal material for bone grafting due to its fragility. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have been introduced in order to reinforce PMMA resulting in a composite material which exhibits improved tensile properties, increased fatigue resistance and fracture tough...