Archive for August, 2010

Fracture Formation and FEM

Wednesday, August 4th, 2010

We’ll be looking at the phenomena of fracture formation, and modeling it using the finite element method based on this thesis by P. Federl. The general idea is that we have a material which consists of a surface with two layers that are connected.  The bottom layer grows, causing the top layer to deform.  When the amount of deformation passes a threshold, a fracture is formed.  You can assume most if not all of the material presented is from the thesis, while any mistakes are my own.

Read the rest of this entry »