Abstract
In this paper, a model of a composite plate with a central elliptical cut-out and with an initial fissure was subjected to a tension load in the finite element method (FEM) software Abaqus to observe the propagation of that crack during a certain amount of time that elapsed in the FEM analysis. Due to symmetry, only half of the plate was modeled, as a shell, and the extended finite element method (XFEM) was used for the crack. The material properties that were assigned to the plate were taken from the database of the Ansys Mechanical software. In the vicinity of the crack a finer mesh was applied to be able to better observe the evolution of the fissure and the changes of the Von Misses stress graphs for each time step of the analysis.
Keywords: Crack Propagation; Abaqus; XFEM; Composite Plate