Abstract

In linear elastic fracture mechanics the stress field is singular at the tip of a crack Since the representation of this singularity in a numerical model raises considerable numerical difficulties the paper uses a strategy that regularizes the elastic field subtracting the singularity from the stress field known as the singularity subtraction technique SST In this paper the SST is implemented in a local mesh-free numerical model coupled with modern optimization schemes used for solving twodimensional problems of the linear elastic fracture mechanics The mesh-free numerical model ILMF considers the approximation of the elastic field with moving least squares MLS and implements a reduced numerical integration Since the ILMF model implements the singularity subtraction technique that performs a regularization of the stress field the mesh-free analysis does not require a refined discretization to obtain accurate results and therefore is a very efficient numerical analysis