Evaluation of interaction effect of two surface cracks by fatigue

Fatigue crack growth under mixed mode loading conditions is simulated using S-version FEM. By using S-FEM technique, only local mesh should be re-meshed for new crack configuration, and it becomes easy to simulate crack growth. By combining with auto-meshing technique, local mesh easily re-meshed and curved crack path is modeled easily. Fully automatic crack growth simulation system in 3-dimensional problem is developed. Using this system, several kinds of plural surface cracks problems are simulated. It is shown that intereaction effect between two surface cracks appear in complicated manner depending on intial distances between two cracks.