New strategies for some issues of numerical manifold method in simulation of crack propagation

SUMMARY Aiming to solve, in a unified way, continuous and discontinuous problems in geotechnical engineering, the numerical manifold method introduces two covers, namely, the mathematical cover and the physical cover. In order to reach the goal, some issues in the simulation of crack propagation have to be solved, among which are the four issues to be treated in this study: (1) to reduce the rank deficiency induced by high degree polynomials as local approximation, a new variational principle is formulated, which suppresses the gradient-dependent DOFs; (2) to evaluate the integrals with singularity of 1/r, a new numerical quadrature scheme is developed, which is simpler but more efficient than the existing Duffy transformation; (3) to analyze kinked cracks, a sign convention for argument in the polar system at the crack tip is specified, which leads to more accurate results in a simpler way than the existing mapping technique; and (4) to demonstrate the mesh independency of numerical manifold method in handling strong singularity, a mesh deployment scheme is advised, which can reproduce all singular locations of the crack with regard to the mesh. Corresponding to the four issues, typical examples are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed schemes. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.