LAUSR

Summary We present a novel method to model large deformation fluid-structure-fracture interaction, which is characterized by the fact that the fluid-induced loads lead to fracture of the structure and the fluid medium fills the resulting crack opening; the mutual interaction between the crack faces and the surrounding fluid contributes substantially to the overall dynamics. A mesh refitting approach is used to model the quasi-static fracture of the structure, and a robust embedded interface formulation is used to solve the fluid flow equations. The proposed method uses a strongly coupled partitioned scheme with Aitken's Δ2 method as convergence accelerator. Selected numerical examples of increasing complexity are presented to evaluate the performance of the proposed fluid-structure-fracture coupling algorithm. The most difficult simulation of the reported examples involves a number of complex phenomena: mixed-mode crack propagation through the structure, fluid starts to fill the crack opening, complete fracture of the structure into two pieces of which one is carried away by the flow.