On the theory and numerical simulation of cohesive crack propagation with application to fiber-reinforced composites

The phenomenon of crack propagation is among the predominant modes of failure in many natural and engineering structures, often leading to severe loss of structural integrity and catastrophic failure. Thus, the ability to understand and a priori simulate the evolution of this failure mode has been one of the corner stones of applied mechanics and structural engineering, and is broadly referred to as fracture mechanics. The work presented here focuses on extending this understanding, in the context of through-the-thickness crack propagation in cohesive materials, through the development of a continuum level multiscale numerical framework, which represents cracks as displacement discontinuities across a surface of zero measure. The formal treatment significantly derives from earlier work on numerical simulation of strong discontinuities and the variational multiscale method. The resulting computational framework is demonstrated through benchmark problems and validated by comparison with experimental observations of failure in fiber-reinforced composites.