Literature investigates the crack propagation behaviour of asphalt materials through the use of damage models. These shortcomings can be avoided by the XFEM proposed by Belytschko and Moës. When the FEM is used to study crack propagation, it is necessary to re-mesh the elements, which significantly increases the workload and leads to a low calculation accuracy and efficiency. The main numerical methods for simulating fracture propagation are the finite-element method (FEM), eXtended finite-element method (XFEM) and meshless method.

Scholars have put forward various theories and calculation methods to study the discontinuous characteristics of rock masses. How to accurately calculate the stress–strain state of a rock with structural planes has become a hot topic.

These structural planes have different mechanical characteristics that cause the rock mass to have discontinuous deformation and strength characteristics. On the other hand, there are many structural planes in a rock mass, including splitting, joints and faults. On the one hand, under the action of force, a rock mass will undergo elastic–plastic deformation, and there are quite a number of constitutive models to describe the deformation characteristics. As a special material, rock masses have the characteristics of both a continuous and discontinuous medium.

Griffith and Orowan have done early work and made a breakthrough in brittle fracture theory.

The comparative investigation indicates that: (i) the LRPIM results are close to the model test results, which indicates that it is feasible for analysing the crack growth of elastic–plastic materials (ii) compared with the LRPIM, the XFEM results are closer to the experimental results, showing that the XFEM has higher accuracy and computational efficiency and (iii) compared with the XFEM, when the LRPIM method is used to analyse crack propagation, the propagation path is not smooth enough, which can be explained as the crack tip stress and strain not being accurate enough and still needing further improvement.įracture is a manifestation of material failure. Crack propagation in elastic–plastic materials is compared using the LRPIM and eXtended finite-element method (XFEM). In this paper, the local radial basis point interpolation method (LRPIM) combined with elastic–plastic theory and fracture mechanics is employed to analyse crack propagation in elastic–plastic materials. The modelling and understanding of crack propagation for elastic–plastic materials is critical in various engineering applications, such as safety analysis of concrete structures and stability analysis of rock slopes.

Gauss 10 crack comm