Cohesive laws X-FEM association for simulation of damage fracture transition and tensile shear switch in dynamic crack propagation

This paper is devoted to the formulation of transitions in fracture for quasi static and dynamic crack propagation. It is organized in three parts. The first one describes a general way to construct a cohesive law which is thermodynamically equivalent to a damaging bulk material. The second part is devoted to the proposition of a unique dynamic crack propagation law which discriminates between tensile and shear cracking in case of moderate plasticity at crack tip. The third part of the paper compares experiments with simulation in both cases.