Research on the Plane Multiple Cracks Stress Intensity Factors Based on Stochastic Finite Element Method

Taylor stochastic finite element method (SFEM) is applied to analyze the uncertainty of plane multiple cracks stress intensity factors (SIFs) considering the uncertainties of material properties, crack length, and load. The stochastic finite element model of plane multiple cracks are presented. In this model, crack tips are meshed with six-node triangular quarter-point elements; and other area is meshed with six-node triangular elements. The partial derivatives of displacement and stiffness matrix with respect to all the random variables obtained by Taylor SFEM are derived. Meanwhile, the mean and variance expressions of SIF under uncertain factors are also derived. Parallel double-crack illustrative example of using the proposed method is given. The calculation results indicate that the uncertainty of SIF is influenced by the distance of the cracks, the smaller the distance of cracks is, the greater the SIF uncertainty is, and the uncertainties of material elastic modulus, load and crack length markedly affect the uncertainty of SIF; and the Poisson ratio of material has little influence. Among the variables, the elastic modulus has the greatest effect on SIF uncertainty. The next is external load. The crack length has lower effect on SIF uncertainty than both the elastic modulus and external load.