Simulation of crack propagation in a porous cast steel specimen subjected to fatigue loading

This video presents the simulation of a crack propagation, in elastic linear fracture mechanics, in a three-dimensional porous specimen. The initial mesh is obtained using tomography and an adaptive remeshing approach is performed using Z-cracks software coupled to the Z-set finite element solver. The calculation is carried out in 163 remeshing steps with discretization of 400,000 to 900,000 degrees of freedom, during 6 hours of calculation on a laptop computer. During propagation, the cracked surface interacts with the porosities forming several crack fronts, whose speed and direction are governed by a Paris law and a branching criterion based on the values of the stress intensity factors in mode I and II. Depending on whether coalescence or separation phenomena occur, the number of crack fronts can reach about thirty independent entities, until the cracked surface represents about 60% of the specimen cross-section, when critical toughness is reached. Coupled with many FE software (Abaqus, ANSYS, Samcef, Co