SYSTEM OF THREE COLLINEAR INTERFACE CRACKS IN A FINITE SIZE DOMAIN

A bimaterial region, consisting of two rectangles, connected by their edges is considered. Three cracks of arbitrary length and location have appeared in the interface. It is assumed that the load applied at the outer ends of the rectangles is directed orthogonally to the interface. The Abaqus software package is used to solve the problem. A finite element mesh with thickening near the cracks and especially near their tips is created. Eight-node finite elements of the Lagrangian type are used. A series of calculations are performed on different meshes with different degrees of their thickening, which allows us to assess the dependence of the results on the mesh parameters. To simplify and speed up the modeling process, a program in Python, which is integrated into Abaqus as a script was written. This program allows us to change quickly the parameters of cracks, loads and material properties, as well as automatically create a new mesh for each configuration. The analysis focused on the consideration of the sizes of the crack region and the calculation region dependencies. It was found out that the energy release rate increases with a decrease in the relative size of the calculation region. This is especially evident for the crack tips that are closest to the boundaries of the region. For the case of a region much larger than the crack size, a comparison of numerical results with the corresponding analytical solutions was carried out and their good agreement was shown.