Material forces for crack analysis of functionally graded materials in adaptively refinded FE-meshes (Q933259)

The author provides a thorough approach to the computation of fracture parameters in the so-called functionally graded materials. More particularly, he considers stationary straight cracks and exploits the balance of material forces [in the sense of the undersigned; cf. \textit{G. A. Maugin}, Appl. Mech. Rev. 48, 213--245 (1995)] discretized by means of a standard Galerkin finite element procedure. The celebrated \(J\)-integral of fracture theory is evaluated using a domain-type formulation in which the material nodal forces of the FEM scheme are summed up in a finite region near the crack tip. This yields a very attractive method for adaptively refined finite element meshes. The advantages of this procedure are shown by comparing its results to classical theoretical and numerical solutions already available for two examples.