A coupled high-accuracy phase-field fluid-structure interaction framework for Stokes fluid-filled fracture surrounded by an elastic medium

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel coupled framework combining high-accuracy phase-field fracture modeling with fluid-structure interaction to simulate Stokes flow in fractures within elastic media, enabling precise fracture path prediction.

Contribution

The work introduces an iterative coupling approach that integrates phase-field fracture modeling with fluid-structure interaction for improved fracture and flow simulation accuracy.

Findings

Effective simulation of quasi-static brittle fractures

Accurate modeling of Stokes flow within fractures

Demonstration of the method on numerical examples

Abstract

In this work, we couple a high-accuracy phase-field fracture reconstruction approach iteratively to fluid-structure interaction. The key motivation is to utilize phase-field modelling to compute the fracture path. A mesh reconstruction allows a switch from interface-capturing to interface-tracking in which the coupling conditions can be realized in a highly accurate fashion. Consequently, inside the fracture, a Stokes flow can be modelled that is coupled to the surrounding elastic medium. A fully coupled approach is obtained by iterating between the phase-field and the fluid-structure interaction model. The resulting algorithm is demonstrated for several numerical examples of quasi-static brittle fractures. We consider both stationary and quasi-stationary problems. In the latter, the dynamics arise through an incrementally increasing given pressure.