PHASE _ELD MODEL OF FRACTURE AND THE E_ECT OF HYDROGEN ON CRACK PROPAGATION

Abstract

The development of a phase eld solver coupled with the equation of me- chanical equilibrium has been proposed. The solver consists of the equation of elasticity which is coupled with the Allen-Cahn equation to compute the evo- lution of the crack as a phase eld parameter. The coupled equations are then solved implicitly in the plain strain condition using the spectral techniques with the help of tw3 package. The solver is generalized for Isotropic materials and it can be used to solve the propagation of crack in any Isotropic material by providing the elastic constants along with the plain strain loading conditions. Methods are applied to speed up the convergence rate of the iterative solver which will be described further.