Improving the Extended Finite Element Method in the Crack Problems via the Remeshing Process

Challenging and complex nature of the numerical analysis of crack problems have attracted the interest of many researchers in past decades and several techniques have been proposed for these problems. One of these techniques is the extended finite element method in which the crack tip field modeling is improved by enrichment of shape functions and the crack can intersect the elements. On the other hand, we have adaptive finite element method which aims to improve the accuracy of displacement and stress fields near the crack tip by remeshing process. Researchers have reported the drawbacks of each of these two techniques. In this paper the drawbacks of the previous techniques are covered with proper combination of these two techniques. By this combination the crack can pass through the elements and there is no need for crack tracking by mesh. In addition the estimated error is limited to desirable bands and stress intensity factor can be computed numerically with acceptable accuracy.