Issue 78

C. Popa et alii, Fracture and Structural Integrity, 78 (2026) 118-128; DOI: 10.3221/IGF-ESIS.78.07

N UMERICAL SIMULATIONS

F

inite element simulations were conducted using ANSYS (commercial software), employing DesignModeler for geometric parameterization and the Static Structural module for mechanical analysis. The specimen geometry was developed in ANSYS DesignModeler (DM), and key dimensions were parameterized. A 2D representation of the specimen is provided in Fig. 1, where A, B, and C identify the geometric parameters considered in the parametric study. The corresponding parameter definitions and values are listed in Tab. 1. Simulations were performed for multiple configurations generated by systematically combining these parameter values.

Figure 1: Specimen 2D drawing.

Distance A [mm] Radius B [mm]

6

7

8.35 0.85

9

10

0.6

0.7

0.9

1

Angle C [°]

30 60 Table 1: Geometric parameter values (distance and radius in mm, angle in degrees). 37.5 45 52.5

The boundary conditions applied in the numerical simulations are illustrated in Fig. 2. The region highlighted in blue was assigned a fixed support condition, constraining all translational and rotational degrees of freedom. The region highlighted in yellow corresponds to the loading area, where a prescribed displacement was applied along the perimeter of the square feature. A total displacement of 6 mm was imposed in all simulated configurations.

Figure 2: Numerical analysis boundary conditions.

Hexahedral elements were used for the finite element discretization. The mesh comprised 398,796 elements, connected in 1735528 nodes with a nominal element size of 0.35 mm. The material (PETG) was modeled as an isotropic linear elastic material. The elastic properties were defined using literature data, with Young’s modulus E=2.2 GPa and Poisson’s ratio ν =0.35. This assumption is appropriate for evaluating stress distributions and comparing geometric configurations. The analysis does not employ an explicit failure criterion; instead, it is based on stress evaluation, where the objective is to maximize the shear-to-normal stress ratio.

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