Fatigue crack growth analysis of hydrogel by using peridynamics

Abstract

This study presents an application of bond-associated non-ordinary state-based peridynamics (PD) and the corresponding fatigue theory to predict fatigue crack growth in hydrogel. The constitutive model of the hydrogel is assumed to be the neo-Hookean material. Fatigue process is viewed as a series of quasi-static crack growth and solved by the explicit method. The applied strain energy-based fatigue criterion is obtained from hydrogel fatigue experiments. The fidelity of this model is established by simulating the relevant experiment. Due to the limitation of the test data, only crack growth phase of fatigue life of hydrogel is focused on. The progressive damage predictions by PD agree with that of experiment and capture the general characteristics of the experimentally observed damage patterns.