In aircraft engineering, an increase of internal pressure in a hydraulic pipe increases the probability of pipe damage, leading to crack propagation becoming a serious issue. In this study, the extended finite element method (XFEM) is applied to simulate initial crack propagation in hydraulic pipes and to investigate the influence factors. Stress intensity factors are extracted to verify the mesh independence of XFEM, which is based on the level set method and unit decomposition method. A total of 30 finite element models of hydraulic pipes with cracks are established. The distribution of von Mises stress under different initial crack lengths and internal pressures is obtained to analyze the change of load-carrying capacity in different conditions. Then, a total of 300 finite element models of hydraulic pipes with different initial crack sizes and locations are simulated under different working conditions. The relationship between the maximum opening displacement and crack length is analyzed by extracting the opening displacement under different initial crack lengths. The length and depth of the initial crack are changed to analyze the factors affecting crack propagation. The opening size and crack propagation length are obtained in different directions. The results show that radial propagation is more destructive than longitudinal propagation for hydraulic pipes in the initial stage of crack propagation.
Keywords: crack propagation; influence factors; initial crack; internal pressure; the extended finite element method.