Dependence of Equilibrium Griffith Surface Energy on Crack Speed in Phase-Field Models for Fracture Coupled to Elastodynamics
Phase-field models for crack propagation enable the simulation of complex crack patterns without complex and expensive tracking and remeshing as cracks grow. In the setting without inertia, the crack evolution is obtained from a variational energetic starting point, and leads to an equation for the order parameter coupled to elastostatics. Careful mathematical analysis has shown that this is consistent with the Griffith model for fracture. Recent efforts to include inertia in this formulation have replaced elastostatics by elastodynamics.
