Z-cracks 3D fracture simulation with automatic generation of regular ring mesh around crack fronts

The new version of Z-cracks allows a new feature that considerably reduces the computational time of any high-fidelity FE crack propagation simulation. Automatic generation of a user specified layer number of elements in rings around the crack front is provided in admissible regions, to very accurately compute local stress fields and stress intensity factors. This approach is compatible with all the already available advanced Z-cracks functionalities (high quality multi threaded SIF calculation, interacting cracks growth with coalescing, contact on crack lips, non-linear thermo-elastic-plastic material behavior, mesh transfer operations, etc.). Plugged with many commercial solvers (Abaqus, ANSYS, Samcef, Code_Aster), or our in-house HPC based finite element solver Z-set, such solution is ready to simulate any complex industrial component damage tolerance analysis. Calculation time is about 15-20 seconds for a complete propagation step (FEA, post-processing and remeshing) on the movie exemples.