A simple element-splitting model to simulate the tensile fracture of brittle materials and its experimental verification

Because of the low tensile strength of brittle materials, the tensile fracture simulation is of great importance to the numerical study of the failure procedure of these materials. A simple element-splitting model is proposed in this paper to simulate the tensile fracture procedure based on finite element method (FEM). As an application of this model, the fracture procedure of a doughnut-shaped specimen is simulated and the numerical results are compared with the deformation fields' evolution from an experiment on a granite specimen with the same geometry and same loading process. Results from the experiment verified the validation of the simulation model.