Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering

Thermal modeling of Laser Powder Bed Fusion (LPBF) is challenging due to steep, rapidly moving thermal gradients induced by the laser, which are difficult to resolve accurately with conventional Finite Element Methods (FEM). Highly refined, dynamically adaptive spatial discretization is typically required, leading to prohibitive computational costs. Semi-analytical approaches mitigate this by dec…

We investigate dynamic crack propagation and fragmentation with the phase-field fracture approach. The method was chosen for its ability to yield crack paths that are independent of the underlying mesh, thanks to the damage regularization zone. In dynamics, we observe a progressive widening of this regularization zone and attribute it to an unphysical trapping of elastic waves. We show that the d…