Meshless Analysis of Cracked Functionally Graded Plates under Thermal Loading

The element-free Galerkin method which is enriched intrinsically is applied for fracture analysis of functionally graded materials under mode I steady-state and transient thermal loading. The stress intensity factors are evaluated by means of both equivalent domain integral and displacement correlation technique. Continuum functions and the micromechanical model are used to describe the distribution of material properties. For thermal shock analysis, the modal decomposition method which is a semi-discretization approach is implemented to obtain the transient temperature field. The accuracy of numerical results is verified using the available reference solutions. Also, few parametric analyses are performed to study the effect of material gradation on the stress intensity factors. The results imply that the magnitude of the stress intensity factor reaches to its peak at a short while after the thermal shock which indicates its significant role in the fracture failure.