Adaptive modelling of dynamic brittle fracture - a combined phase field regularized cohesive zone model and scaled boundary finite element approach

Based on the error indicator computed from the scaled boundary equations, a quadtree based adaptive phase-field method is proposed for dynamic brittle fracture problems in isotropic material using the scaled boundary finite element method (SBFEM). The use of SBFEM alleviates the need for additional: (a) constraints to handle hanging nodes resulting from adaptive refinement and (b) post-processing techniques. Three representative examples are solved to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed approach. From the numerical study, it is opined that the proposed approach requires an order of magnitude fewer degrees of freedom when compared to uniform refinement and can capture the crack morphology under dynamic loading conditions without compromising accuracy.