Bi-material V-notch stress intensity factors by the fractal-like finite element method

The fractal-like finite element method (FFEM) is developed to provide stress intensity factor (SIF) values for bi-material notches. The displacement fields around a bi-material notch tip are derived and employed as global interpolation functions in the FFEM to transform the large number of nodal displacements in the singular region to a small set of generalised co-ordinates leading to direct computation of the SIFs and the coefficients of the higher order terms. Various numerical examples for bi-material crack and notch cases are presented. New results for bi-material notches are reported.