A précis of some recent developments in computational failure mechanics

Abstract

A concise overview is given of various numerical methods that can be used to analyse localisation and failure in engineering materials. The importance of the cohesive-zone approach is emphasised and various ways of incorporating the cohesive-zone methodology in discretisation methods are discussed. Next, a simple continuum damage (decohesion) model which preserves well-posedness of boundary value problems via gradient enhancement is recalled. Using a meshless method the importance of the higher-order gradient terms is assessed. Finally, the model is used in finite element reliability analyses to quantify the probability of the emergence of various possible failure modes.