IUTAM Symposium on Computational Fracture Mechanics in Multifield Problems

The Symposium wants to address one of the open challenges in computational mechanics: the prediction of damage, crack growth, and the extent of fragmentation in multi-field problems. In a multifield environment, the modeling of the material is per se demanding; in addition, the intricate and non-regular structure of cracks renders numerical simulations of cracking bodies extremely difficult. Beyond well established and popular methods based on cohesive zone and extended finite elements that advanced remarkably computational fracture mechanics, recently several innovative approaches have emerged, such as phase-field fracture, eigenfracture, eigenerosion, and peridynamics. These approaches are characterized by a regularization of the evolving crack boundaries which requires the inclusion of a small but finite length scale. This length scale arouses new questions and doubts, especially when multi-physic problems are considered. We would like to illustrate and compare different computational strategies for multi-field fracture problems, opening a forum to discuss new horizons and new perspectives of computational fracture research. The symposium will address the most advanced aspects of the research in the field, from specific methods of choice and numerical strategies to theoretical developments of constitutive modeling in a multi-field setting. Pioneering discretization methods for the solution of failure phenomena in coupled non-linear environments at different length scales and affected by uncertainty will be especially welcome.