Dependence of crack paths on the orientation of regular 2D peridynamic grids

An example of dynamic crack propagation in a 2D plate is used to clearly describe a problem affecting regular peridynamic grids: the crack-path dependence on the grid orientation. The problem, potentially very damaging for a computational method devised to simulate in particular crack propagation conditions, is investigated and better understood. In order to solve it the paper proposes a strategy which involves an increase of the computational cost when applied to the whole discretized domain. The use of adaptive refinement techniques allows to apply such a strategy only where crack propagation is taking place and, in this way, drastically increases the computational efficiency. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd.