In spite of the fact that the use of contact elements in modeling crack surface contact, and thus in modeling of crack closure is inherently natural, almost no effort to incorporate it in the finite element analysis of fatigue crack growth has been reported in the literature. The traditional method is based on placing truss elements on the crack surface nodes In this research contact elements are used to model crack surface contact and similar to mentioned method the determination of crack opening stress is accomplished by monitoring the state of contact elements during incrementally applied...
In spite of the fact that the use of contact elements in modeling crack surface contact, and thus in modeling of crack closure is inherently natural, ...