Fatigue crack growth simulation using the moving mesh technique

This work proposes a finite element (FE)-based numerical model that uses the moving mesh technique for simulating fatigue crack propagation phenomena inside material components subjected to cyclic loads. Precisely, the computational mesh is adjusted during the numerical simulation according to conditions dictated by the criteria of fracture mechanics. Unlike standard FE procedures, which perform remeshing for each increment of the crack length, the proposed model updates the computational mesh only when FEs are distorted excessively because of the mesh nodes' motion, thus reducing computational burdens considerably. The validity of the proposed method is assessed through comparisons with existing experimental and numerical results.