Modeling of thermo-mechanical fracture behaviors based on cohesive segments formulation

An element-free framework is developed to study the thermo-mechanical fracture behavior of materials based on the cohesive segments model, in which a crack is treated as a combination of a series of cohesive segments and a new cohesive segment is added whenever the cracking criterion is met at a node. Using the moving least-square shape functions as the partition of unity, the discontinuity field is approximated with extra degrees of freedom at the existing nodes. Cohesive constitutive laws are used to model force and heat transfer through cracks. Mechanical and temperature fields are incorporated into a coupled nonlinear system, and the crack problem is iteratively solved. The chosen numerical examples illustrate the efficiency and flexibility of the proposed method.