• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.26 no.5A
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• pp.861-872
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• 2006

The element free Galerkin method is extended by the local partition of unity method to model the cohesive cracks in two dimensional continuum. The shape function of a particle whose domain of influence is completely cut by a crack is enriched by the step enrichment function. If the domain of influence contains a crack tip inside, it is enriched by a branch enrichment function which does not have the LEFM stress singularity. The discrete equations are obtained directly from the standard Galerkin method since the enrichment is only for the displacement field, which satisfies the local partition of unity. Because only particles whose domains of influence are influenced by a crack are enriched, the system matrix is still sparse so that the increase of the computational cost is minimized. The condition for crack growth in dynamic problems is obtained from the material instability; when the acoustic tensor loses the positive definiteness, a cohesive crack is inserted to the point so as to change the continuum to a discontiuum. The crack speed is naturally obtained from the criterion. It is found that this method is more accurate and converges faster than the classical meshless methods which are based on the visibility concept. In this paper, several well-known static and dynamic problems were solved to verify the method.