Fracture Mechanics Analysis of 2-D FGMs by a Meshless BEM

This paper presents a fracture mechanics analysis in continuously non-homogeneous, isotropic, linear elastic and functionally graded materials (FGMs). A meshless boundary element method (BEM) is developed for this purpose. Young’s modulus of the FGMs is assumed to have an exponential variation, while Poisson’s ratio is taken as constant. Since no simple fundamental solutions are available for general FGMs, fundamental solutions for homogeneous, isotropic and linear elastic solids are used in the present BEM, which contains a domain-integral due to the material non-homogeneity. Normalized displacements are introduced to avoid displacement gradients in the domain-integral. The domain-integral is transformed into a boundary integral along the global boundary by using the radial integration method (RIM). To approximate the normalized displacements arising in the domain-integral, basis functions consisting of radial basis functions and polynomials in terms of global coordinates are applied. Numerical results are presented and discussed to show the accuracy and the efficiency of the present meshless BEM.