This paper on "Quality Assurance of Fracture Mechanics Finite Element Package" was presented at the International Conference on Quality Assurance and Standards in Finite Element Analysis - 22-25 May 1989, Stratford-upon-Avon, England.

Abstract

The majority of the users who use special purpose fracture mechanic finite element programs are usually interested in the values of stress intensity factors. This practice causes neglect toward other generated output of the program, in particular various components of stress.
This paper deals with the quality assurance aspect of a special purpose fracture mechanics finite element program APES. Thorough examination of post processing modules of APES has revealed a number of quality assurance issues, which had remained undetected for a number of years. Issues such as: the lack of symmetry in the pattern of output stress components in the presence of symmetric geometry and boundary conditions; distortion of resultant stresses due to a minor discontinuity existing in the displacement field of the enriched crack tip element; incorrect and exaggerated stress gradient due to improper use of the order of polynomials employed in the plotting routine, are discussed.
The remedy to the above problems are discussed as well.