Motivation: Why we are interested in Computational Fracture Mechanics
Cracking Is a Worldwide-Scale Problem:
- > $200B per year cost to U.S. national economy
- Energy, Defense and Life Safety Issues
Simulation of Crack Growth Is Complicated and Computationally Expensive:
- An evolutionary geometry problem
- Complex discretization problem
- Many solutions of mega-DOF finite element problems
We Were at An Impasse:
- Needed better physics--required larger problems
- Larger problems impossible/impractical