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Multiple flaws are frequently occurred in actual components, such as pressure vessels and power plants. These flaws will in some circumstances lead to more severe effects than single flaw alone. Assessment of the interaction behaviour is based on an evaluation of the alignment and combination of these multiple flaws. In the current standards, multiple cracks are treated as an equivalent single crack if the distance between two cracks satisfies a prescribed criterion. First, this study introduces the current alignment and combination rules for through cracks. Following, to investigate the effects of the interaction of cracks, brittle fracture of a plate containig two adjacent cracks is simulated. The effect of cracks distances and crack lengths on stress intensity factors is evaluated. Also, crack growth analysis is simulated based on linear elastic fracture mechanics approach. The extended finite element method has been utilized to model the problem. This method enables the domain to be modeled by finite elements without explicitly meshing the crack surfaces, and hence crack propagation simulations can be carried out without remeshing. Based on the results, a new alignment and combination rule is proposed.

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The existence of crack and notch is a significant and critical subject in the analysis and design of solids and structures. As most of damage problems do not have closed-form solutions, numerical methods are current approaches dealing with fracture mechanics problems. This study presents a novel application of the decoupled equations method (DEM) to model crack issues. Based on linear elastic fracture mechanics (LEFM), the J-integral is computed using the DEM. In this method, only the boundaries of problems are discretized using specific higher-order sub-parametric elements and higher-order Chebyshev mapping functions. Implementing the weighted residual method and using Clenshaw-Curtis numerical integration result in diagonal Euler’s differential equations. Consequently, when the local coordinates origin (LCO) is located at the crack tip, the geometry of crack problems are directly implemented without further processing. In order to present infinite stress at the crack tip, a new form of nodal force function is proposed. Validity and accuracy of this method is fully demonstrated through two benchmark problems. The numerical results agree very well with the results from existing experimental results and numerical methods available in literature.