Prediction of fatigue crack growth behaviour in S355 strutural steel using XFEM technique

In order to perform life assessments on engineering structures subjected to cyclic loading conditions, it is essential to characterize the fatigue crack growth behaviour of the material. In this work, eXtended Finite Element Method (XFEM) simulations have been carried out to predict the fatigue crack growth behaviour in S355 structural steel using ABAQUS finite element software package. To validate the model, the prediction results are compared with experimental data. A good agreement has been found between the predictions from XFEM model and the experimental results, especially in the Paris region of the fatigue crack growth curve. Moreover, a sensitivity analysis has been conducted to examine the dependency of predicted results on energy release rate parameters, Paris-law coefficients, load magnitude and mesh size.