AN XFEM BASED KINEMATIC LIMIT ANALYSIS FORMULATION FOR PLANE STRAIN CRACKED STRUCTURES USING SOCP

Abstract

This paper extends a numerical procedure for limit analysis based on extended finite element method (XFEM) and second-order cone programming (SOCP) to plane strain cracked structures. The cracked structures are easily modelled and simulated using XFEM because it allows discontinuities across elements, and these discontinuities are recognized by means of level set method. The esulting discretization formulation is then cast in a form which involves second-order cone constraints, ensuring that the underlying optimization problem can be solved by highly efficient primal-dual interior point algorithm. The efficiency of the present approach is illustrated by examing several numerical examples.