Shear fracture propagation in quasi-brittle materials by an element-free Galerkin method

In this study, an element-free Galerkin (EFG) method for analysis of shear crack growth in brittle and quasi-brittle materials using a cohesive crack model is developed. The Mohr-Coulomb criterion is utilized as a damage threshold to check the failure of the material and predict the shear failure directions. The energy release rate criterion is adopted for defining the crack propagation from two possible shear planes. Linear cohesion softening is chosen to describe the strain softening, and residual strength of the material. Numerical experiments and physical model tests of two-dimensional crack propagation were carried out to verify the present approach. Furthermore, the developed EFG method is adopted to investigate the influence of the fracture energy and incremental crack lengths on predicted failure paths. A large incremental crack length can be utilized in the analysis of materials with high fracture energy, to reduce the computational cost. For materials with low fracture energy, small incremental crack lengths are required for accurate results.