An h-adaptive thermo-mechanical phase field model for fracture

In this work, brittle fracture and thermo-mechanical induced cracks are simulated using a phase field model in 2D and 3D continua in homogeneous and heterogeneous materials. The phase field model for fracture has specific regulations regarding the finite element mesh size. Therefore, a mesh refinement algorithm by adopting a predictor-corrector mesh refinement strategy is used in both applications of mechanical and thermo-mechanical fracture models. Several mechanical and thermo-mechanical examples are presented in this work to prove the capability of the proposed numerical implementation. The multi-field problems are solved using a staggered solution algorithm with and without the parallelization of the system equations. The simulation times of the tested specimens are compared for different meshing criteria, adaptive refinement, pre-refinement of the expected crack path, and the global refinement of the specimen.