A new automated stretching finite element method for 2D crack propagation

This work presents a study of crack propagation with a new 2D finite element method with the stretching of the mesh. This method affects at each propagation step new coordinates of each element node of the mesh. The structure is divided to areas and each area has its own coordinate formulas. A program in FORTRAN allows us to create a parametric mesh, which keeps the same number of nodes and elements during different steps of crack propagation. The nodes are stretched using the criterion of maximum circumferential stress (MCS). The fracture parameters such as stress intensity factors in modes I and II and the orientation angles are calculated by solving the problem by the finite element code ABAQUS.