Fracture mechanics has established itself as an important discipline of growing interest to those working to assess the safety, reliability and service life of engineering structures and materials. In order to calculate the loading situation at cracks and defects, nowadays numerical techniques like finite element method (FEM) have become indispensable tools for a broad range of applications. The present monograph provides an introduction to the essential concepts of fracture mechanics, its main goal being to procure the special techniques for FEM analysis of crack problems, which have to date only been mastered by experts. All kinds of static, dynamic and fatigue fracture problems are treated in two- and three-dimensional elastic and plastic structural components. The usage of the various solution techniques is demonstrated by means of sample problems selected from practical engineering case studies. The primary target group includes graduate students, researchers in academia and engineers in practice.

Winner of the TAA 2014 "Texty" Textbook Excellence Award

Preface1 Introduction2 Classification of fracture processes3 Basics of fracture mechanics4 Finite Element Method5 FE-techniques for crack analysis in linear-elastic structures6 Numerical calculation of generalized energy balance integrals7 FE-techniques for crack analysis in elastic-plastic structures8 Numerical simulation of crack propagation9 Practical applicationsAppendix: Fundamentals of strength of materialsIndex