XFEM for fatigue and fracture analysis of cracked stiffened panels

This paper presents the development of methodologies using Extended Finite Element Method (XFEM) for cracked unstiffened and concentric stiffened panels subjected to constant amplitude tensile fatigue loading. XFEM formulations such as level set representation of crack, element stiffness matrix formulation and numerical integration are presented and implemented in MATLAB software. Stiffeners of the stiffened panels are modelled using truss elements such that nodes of the panel and nodes of the stiffener coincide. Stress Intensity Factor (SIF) is computed from the solutions of XFEM using domain form of interaction integral. Paris