A new enriched finite element for fatigue crack growth

This paper presents a numerical method for fatigue crack growth in the framework of finite element method, i.e. a new enriched element is presented in which only the analytical solutions around crack tips are used to describe the displacements and stresses fields. A special variational principle is introduced to simplify the mathematical derivations for discrete equation, and the stiffness matrix of the new enriched element is given in a compact form. Moreover, the stiffness matrix is found to be independent on the element size. Numerical examples on fatigue crack growth are given to illustrate the validity of the present method.