GDQFEM Numerical Simulations of Continuous Media with Cracks and Discontinuities

In the present paper the Generalized Differential Quadrature Finite Element Method (GDQFEM) is applied to deal with the static analysis of plane state structures with generic through the thickness material discontinuities and holes of various shapes. The GDQFEM numerical technique is an extension of the Generalized Differential Quadrature (GDQ) method and is based on the idea of conventional integral quadrature. In particular, the GDQFEM results in terms of stresses and displacements for classical and advanced plane stress problems with discontinuities are compared to the ones by the Cell Method (CM) and Finite Element Method (FEM). The multi-domain technique is implemented in a MATLAB code for solving irregular domains with holes and defects. In order to demonstrate the accuracy of the proposed methodology, several numerical examples of stress and displacement distributions are graphically shown and discussed.