GPFniCS: A generalised phase field method to model fracture

Abstract

Advanced damage tolerance design of materials and mechanical components heavily relies on fracture failure analysis. A robust, efficient, and versatile software (GPFniCS) is developed and provided for public access to perform fracture analyses based on the Generalised Phase-Field Method. GPFniCS software is developed on top of FEniCS, an open-source finite element library. One-dimensional and two-dimensional mixed mode problems are validated with GPFniCS and provided as illustrative examples in a public repository. The software shows excellent potential for computational fracture studies, and it is open to further developments in various fields like thermal loading, fatigue loading, solidification, and many more.

Keywords

• Phase field method
• Cohesive zone phase field method
• Crack Propagation
• Brittle Fracture
• FEniCS