ABSTRACT
Fracture of rubber-like materials deals with issues related to the fracture itself (crack growth law, stress singularity around the crack tip), and also issues related to the bulk material behaviour (non-linear elasticity, large strain, incompressibility). This chapter focuses on the application of the eXtended Finite Element Method (X-FEM) to the large strain fracture mechanics, under plane stress conditions. Two important aspects of this problem are investigated: the formulation used to solve the problem and the determination of suitable enrichment functions. The method is compared with Abaqus to demonstrate its robustness and capabilities for large strain problems. The chapter discusses the governing equations of the problem. It presents technical aspects of the implementation of the X-FEM to nonlinear elasticity, before following with numerical examples of this implementation. The application of the X-FEM to the field of high strain fracture analysis seems to be promising.
