Rapid evaluation of notch stress intensity factors using the peak stress method with 3D tetrahedral finite element models: Comparison of commercial codes
The peak stress method (PSM) allows a rapid application of the notch stress intensity factor (NSIF) approach to the fatigue life assessment of welded structures, by employing the linear elastic peak stresses evaluated by FE analyses with coarse meshes. Because of the widespread adoption of 3D modeling of large and complex structures in the industry, the PSM has recently been boosted by including four-node and ten-node tetrahedral elements of Ansys FE software, which allows to discretize complex geometries. In this paper, a Round Robin among eleven Italian Universities has been performed to calibrate the PSM with seven different commercial FE software packages. Several 3D mode I, II and III …
Rapid evaluation of notch stress intensity factors using the peak stress method: Comparison of commercial finite element codes for a range of mesh patterns
The peak stress method (PSM) is an engineering, finite element (FE)-oriented method to rapidly estimate the notch stress intensity factors by using the singular linear elastic peak stresses calculated from coarse FE analyses. The average element size adopted to generate the mesh pattern can be chosen arbitrarily within a given range. Originally, the PSM has been calibrated under pure mode I and pure mode II loadings by means of Ansys FE software. In the present contribution, a round robin between 10 Italian universities has been carried out to calibrate the PSM with 7 different commercial FE codes. To this aim, several two-dimensional mode I and mode II problems have been analysed independe…