Seepage Analysis of The Structure with Cracks Based on XFEM

Abstract

For the difficulty of applying classical fracture criteria to the actual hydraulic engineering and simulating the process of cracking by conditional FEM, the XFEM was introduced in the analysis of the seepage field in hydraulic structures in this paper. Firstly, the enriched forms of nodes are analyzed in the elements intersecting with cracks, and then the enriched functions were built, which could either reflect the features of conductivity matrix within cracks, or satisfy the condition that osmotic pressure is continuous across the crack. Thus, the XFEM approximation form was obtained. Finally, combining the initial conditions and boundary conditions, the discrete equations and workflow of XFEM for solving the seepage field were established. The case study shows that the method is reasonable and reliable.