LAUSR

Abstract In the present paper, an efficient mesh-free approach is established to determine the stress intensity factors in the vicinity of the crack tip. This efficient mesh-free approach is based on the Weighted Least Squares method (WLS) combined with the stresses extrapolation method and with the visibility criterion to evaluate the Stress Intensity Factors (SIFs). This approach is applied on a strong formulation to avoid the technique of numerical integration and this permits us to compute the stresses with accuracy with the help of the collocation method. The accuracy and the robustness of the proposed approach are tested on several benchmarks in Linear Elastic Fracture Mechanics (LEFM). The obtained results have demonstrated that this approach is very accurate and stable even for complex problems and it can be an alternative way for the computation of SIFs.