Mesh-Based and Meshfree Reduced Order Phase-Field Models for Brittle Fracture: One Dimensional Problems

Modelling brittle fracture by a phase-field fracture formulation has now been widely accepted. However, the full-order phase-field fracture model implemented using finite elements results in a nonlinear coupled system for which simulations are very computationally demanding, particularly for parametrized problems when the randomness and uncertainty of material properties are considered. To tackle this issue, we present two reduced-order phase-field models for parametrized brittle fracture problems in this work. The first one is a mesh-based Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) method. Both the Discrete Empirical Interpolation Method (DEIM) and the Matrix Discrete Empirical Interpolation Method ((M)DEIM) are adopted to approximate the nonlinear vectors and matrices. The second one is a meshfree Krigingmodel. For one-dimensional problems, served as proof-of-concept demonstrations, in which Young’s modulus and the fracture energy vary, the POD-based model can speed up the online computations eight-times, and for the Kriging model, the speed-up factor is 1100, albeit with a slightly lower accuracy. Another merit of the Kriging’s model is its non-intrusive nature, as one does not need to modify the full-order model code.