Feasibility Study of Three-Dimensional Crack Growth Modeling in Porous Media with Circular Pores Using Two-Dimensional Sections

Due to the complexity of laboratory studies of crack growth in pore scale, several numerical methods have been used to analyze the porous media problems. These methods have high computational costs for large 3D samples. Therefore, it is important to provide bypath methods to reduce the computational costs. One of these methods is to simulate the crack growth and failure process in 2D, and generalize it to 3D space. In this research, the possibility of using this method  for failure analysis of 3D models and faster estimation of material behavior is investigated. First, models including one crack and one pore were modeled in ABAQUS software, and then generalized to more complex models containing five pores in different arrangements. Crack growth path and tensile strength of 3D models and 2D sections were calculated and compared separately. Also, the 2D sections were first merged into a 3D coordinate plane and finally displayed in 3D space. The results showed that the 2D sections which include the largest number of pores in the 3D model, provide better results. Moreover, the final fracture plane of the sample in 2D sections is the same as the 3D model. The average tensile strength of 2D sections is acceptable compared to 3D models and shows less than 6% difference from the original models in most cases. The close match between 2D and 3D models, as well as reducing the run time of processing to about 85%, is promising and indicates the efficiency of such methods.