A Variational Technique for Element Free Analysis of Static and Dynamic Fracture Mechanics

. In this paper a variational technique is developed to calculate stress intensity factors with high accuracy using the element free Glerkin method. The stiffness and mass matrices are evaluated by regular domain integrals and the shape functions to determine displacements in the domain are calculated with radial basis function interpolation. Stress intensity factors were obtained by a boundary integral with a variation of crack length along the crack front. Based on a static reference solution, the transformed stress intensity factors in the Laplace space are obtained and Durbin inversion method is utilised in order to determine the physical values in time domain. The applications of proposed technique to two and three dimensional fracture mechanics are presented. Comparisons are made with benchmark solutions and indirect boundary element method.