H-adaptivity is an effective tool to introduce local mesh refinement in the FEM-based numerical simulation of crack propagation. The implementation of h-adaptivity could benefit the numerical simulation of fatigue or accidental load scenarios involving large structures, such as ship hulls. Meanwhile, in engineering applications, the element deletion method is frequently used to represent cracks. However, the element deletion method has some drawbacks, such as strong mesh dependency and loss of mass or energy. In order to mitigate this problem, the element splitting method could be applied. In this study, a numerical method called 'h-adaptive element splitting' (h-AES) is introduced. The h-AES method is applied in FEM programs by combining h-adaptivity with the element splitting method. Two examples using the h-AES method to simulate cracks in large structures under linear-elastic fracture mechanics scenario are presented. The numerical results are verified against analytical solutions. Based on the examples, the h-AES method is proven to be able to introduce mesh refinement in large-scale numerical models that mostly consist of structured coarse meshes, which is also beneficial to the reduction of computational resources. By employing the h-AES method, very small cracks are well represented in large structures without any deletions of elements.
Keywords: crack propagation; edge separation; finite element method; fracture mechanics; h-AES method; interelement method; linear elastic fracture mechanics; mesh refinement; mesh strategy; numerical crack.