A Hybridizable Discontinuous Galerkin phase-field model for fracture with adaptive refinement

Alba Muixí received the Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and the Master in Advanced Mathematics and Mathematical Engineering from Facultat de Matemàtiques i Estadística (UPC) in 2015 and 2016, respectively. From April 2017, she is a PhD candidate at LaCàN research group, where she focuses on the simulation of crack propagation using advanced discretization methods.

Phase-field models for fracture are attractive because they incorporate the evolution of cracks within the equations of the system. However, the need of a high spatial resolution to approximate properly the solution complicates the use of these models in cases in which the crack path is not known a priori. In this seminar, we present a Hybridizable Discontinuous Galerkin (HDG) formulation for the quasi-static hybrid phase-field model for brittle fracture. This formulation enables the definition of an adaptive refinement strategy locally along cracks, with no need of remeshing.