Swelling-driven crack propagation in large deformation in ionized hydrogel

Stepwise crack propagation is evidently observed in experiments both in geomaterials and in hydrogels. Pizzocolo et al. (2012, "Mode I Crack Propagation in Hydrogels is Step Wise," Eng. Fract. Mech., 97(1), pp. 72-79) show experimental evidence that mode I crack propagation in hydrogel is stepwise. The pattern of the intermittent crack growth is influenced by many factors, such as porosity of the material, the permeability of the fluid, the stiffness of the material, etc. The pause duration time is negatively correlated with the stiffness of the material, while the average propagation length per step is positively correlated. In this paper, we integrate extended finite element method (XFEM) and enhanced local pressure (ELP) method, and incorporate cohesive relation to reproduce the experiments of Pizzocolo et al. in the finite deformation regime. We investigate the stepwise phenomenon in air and in water, respectively, under mode I fracture. Our simulations show that despite the homogeneous material properties, the crack growth under mode I fracture is stepwise, and this pattern is influenced by the hydraulic permeability and the porosity of the material. Simulated pause duration is negatively correlated with stiffness, and the average propagating length is positively correlated with stiffness. In order to eliminate the numerical artifacts, we also take different time increments into consideration. The staccato propagation does not disappear with smaller time increments, and the pattern is approximately insensitive to the time increment. However, we do not observe stepwise crack growth scheme when we simulate fracture in homogeneous rocks

Effects of intrinsic properties on fracture nucleation and propagation in swelling hydrogels

In numerous industrial applications, the microstructure of materials is critical for performance. However, finite element models tend to average out the microstructure. Hence, finite element simulations are often unsuitable for optimisation of the microstructure. The present paper presents a modelling technique that addresses this limitation for superabsorbent polymers with a partially cross-linked surface layer. These are widely used in the industry for a variety of functions. Different designs of the cross-linked layer have different material properties, influencing the performance of the hydrogel. In this work, the effects of intrinsic properties on the fracture nucleation and propagation in cross-linked hydrogels are studied. The numerical implementation for crack propagation and nucleation is based on the framework of the extended finite element method and the enhanced local pressure model to capture the pressure difference and fluid flow between the crack and the hydrogel, and coupled with the cohesive method to achieve crack propagation without re-meshing. Two groups of numerical examples are given: (1) effects on crack propagation, and (2) effects on crack nucleation. Within each example, we studied the effects of the stiffness (shear modulus) and ultimate strength of the material separately. Simulations demonstrate that the crack behaviour is influenced by the intrinsic properties of the hydrogel, which gives numerical support for the structural design of the cross-linked hydroge

Interaction between crack tip advancement and fluid flow in fracturing saturated porous media

We address stepwise crack tip advancement and pressure fluctuations, which have been observed in the field and experimentally in fracturing saturated porous media. Both fracturing due to mechanical loading and pressure driven fracture are considered. After presenting the experimental evidence and the different explanations for the phenomena put forward and mentioning briefly what has been obtained so far by published numerical and analytical methods we propose our explanation based on Biot’s theory. A short presentation of three methods able to simulate the observed phenomena namely the Central Force Model, the Standard Galerkin Finite Element Method SGFEM and extended finite element method XFEM follows. With the Central Force Model it is evidenced that already dry geomaterials break in an intermittent fashion and that the presence of a fluid affects the behavior more or less depending on the loading and boundary conditions. Examples dealing both with hydraulic fracturing and mechanical loading are shown. The conditions needed to reproduce the observed phenomena with FE models at macroscopic level are evidenced. They appear to be the adoption of a crack tip advancement/time step algorithm which interferes the least possible with the three interacting velocities, namely the crack tip advancement velocity on one side, the seepage velocity of the fluid in the domain and from the crack (leak-off), and the fluid velocity within the crack on the other side. Further the crack tip advancement algorithm must allow for reproducing jumps observed in the experiments