A level-set based Eulerian method for simulating problems involving high strain-rate fracture and fragmentation

In this paper, a novel method is proposed for simulating high strain-rate problems that include finite elastoplastic deformations, growth of anisotropic damage, and ultimately fragmentation. The focus of the paper is ductile fracture, although the underlying model is applicable to a broad range of materials and could be adapted to other problems. An Eulerian adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) numerical scheme is proposed that includes methods for modelling material imperfections and the nucleation, growth, and coalescence of arbitrary macro-scale crack networks. Furthermore, a method is proposed for identifying fragments on an AMR hierarchy in order to compute fragment statistics. The method is demonstrated through the simulation of high-strain rate fragmentation of metal rings. The predicted fragment characteristics are shown to be in good agreement with experimental data.