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

• Development of the FFEM to compute SIFs for bi-material notches.
• Derivation of global interpolation for FFEM for a bi-material notch.
• No special singular elements are needed to model the singular region.
• Comparisons of bi-material notch SIFs computed by FFEM and strain energy approach.
• New results for bi-material notches under tension are reported.

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.