NON-UNIFORM DISPLACEMENT JUMPS IN CELLS WITH EMBEDDED DISCON- TINUITY FOR MATERIAL FAILURE ANALYSIS THROUGH THE BOUNDARY ELEMENT METHOD

Resumo

The numerical material failures analysis is extremely important, since it allows predicting
the collapse and the structures post-critical behavior. Thus, in this work the implicit formulation of
the boundary element method is adopted to analyze material failures in models commonly studied in
literature. For this purpose, the continuum strong discontinuity approach together with an automatic
cell generation algorithm that accompanies the crack trajectory during the non-linear analysis are used.
Therefore, the main objective is the insertion of non-uniform jumps discontinuities in the displacement
field inside cells aiming at reducing the stress locking phenomenon presented by cells with constant
embedded jumps. This phenomenon is responsible for the stiffening in structural response due to the
constant cells inability to represent rotation movement. In this way, the results presented by linear cells
were more satisfactory than those presented by constant cells, since the stress locking phenomenon was
considerably reduced, demonstrating that the first class is more adequate in the representation of the
crack opening that occurs during the loading process.