Analyses of fatigue crack propagation with smoothed particle hydrodynamics method

[Display omitted] •Proposed is a new fatigue crack propagation analysis method based on the smoothed particle hydrodynamics.•The crack front line is given the feature of changing its shape naturally as a chained crack front line based on experimental observation.•The present numerical solution shows almost the same crack propagation as observed in the experiment.•The crack propagation with the crack separation and the cracks merging processes is solved in a smooth manner. In this paper, a new fatigue crack propagation analysis method based on the linear fracture mechanics, the Paris-Erdogan Law and the smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH), is proposed. At first, a crack is simply modeled as an aggregate of particle voids for handling crack propagation. Then, the crack front line is given the feature of changing its shape naturally as a chained crack front line based on the experimental observation. Third, the crack propagation algorithm with the SPH including the method to handle the cracks merging problems is developed. Finally, some numerical and experimental data of the fatigue crack propagation behavior are compared to confirm the utility and the validity of the proposed method. In case of a crack propagation from a corner crack, the present numerical solution shows almost the same crack propagation as observed in the experimental data. In case of a two cracks merging problem, the numerical result shows a smoothed time dependent crack propagation behavior. Also, the case in which a crack is passing a hole is successfully solved, showing a smooth crack separation and cracks merging process.