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Abstract
Fitness-for-service (FFS) assessments are critical to the integrity management of offshore and subsea
assets. Decisions regarding continued service life or the need for corrective action for damaged structures
pivot on accurate FFS assessment results. While FFS assessments using failure assessment diagrams
(FAD) and finite element method (FEM) have been successfully implemented on simple and regular
geometries, they are not suitable for structures with complex geometries, transition of failure modes,
presence of residual stress, and nonlinear fracture toughness. Extended finite element method (XFEM), a
fracture mechanics-based approach enriched by extra functions around a crack, is capable of considering
the above mentioned scenarios and evaluating the crack behavior. This paper demonstrates the
performance of XFEM and validates the results obtained from XFEM.

First, XFEM is implemented in assessing a stationary crack on ASTM Compact Test (CT) specimen to
calculate the stress intensity factor (SIF) which the obtained results deviate from the analytical solution
by less than 6% for various crack length cases. Following that, a cracked plate case treated with cold
expansion technique is investigated. Its remaining fatigue life is obtained by simulating fatigue crack
growth, under two sets of residual stresses generated by different mandrel diameters. The results are then
compared to the crack arrest hole (CAH) approach.

Through these case studies, XFEM shows adequacy for FFS applications. XFEM facilitates the modeling
of the crack surface, and eliminates the need to remesh for crack growth analysis. Arbitrary structure
geometries and loading combinations can be directly used in XFEM since the stress and strain responses
are calculated in a conventional FEM framework. This means that the presence of local corrosion and
dents, as well as transition of failure modes can be accounted for. The residual stress effect can be
accurately calculated and considered for SIF calculation. Although XFEM appears to be a good solution
2
for FFS application, adequate caution should be given to the mesh size selection and mesh orientation
because they may cause slight or noticeable fluctuation of results. Therefore, a mesh sensitivity study is
recommended.

Introduction
Fatigue is one of the major failure modes for offshore and subsea structures. When a structural component
is subjected to fluctuating loads over a sufficient time, infinitesimal slits in the material will nucleate to
become a measurable crack, and then the crack can grow to the critical length wherein the remaining
cross-section of the component is unable to carry the load and fracture occurs. Such a fatigue process can
be categorized into three stages: micro-crack nucleation, crack growth, and fracture, illustrated in Figure
1[4], in which a material, mostly ductile, exhibits the importance of the fatigue crack growth region. In
high and medium stress range conditions, a crack will develop after a small and intermediate number of
cycles, respectively. Following that, the crack size increases over time until fracture occurs. It is observed
that a large fraction of fatigue life is utilized for crack growth, which is beneficial for structure integrity
management since Owners can have sufficient time to inspect crack occurrence and crack growth in this
phase. In this paper, a relatively new technique called eXtended Finite Element Method (XFEM) is
introduced and validated, which is a niche in fatigue crack growth calculation.

Figure 1 Progressive fatigue and fracture diagram

Offshore and subsea structures tend to avoid the use of brittle materials. Ductile materials are preferred so
that any cracks due to cyclic loads can occur and be inspected before causing failure. When a crack is
identified, the FFS analysis can be used to assess if such flaws are acceptable provided that the failure will
not occur within the design service life. It is noted that the presence of a crack of a component caused by
inappropriate manufacturing processes or metallurgical discontinuities should be inspected and fixed
before it can be installed or operated. To assess the acceptance of a crack, a conventional fracture
assessment diagram (FAD) approach in accordance with industry standards such as BS 7910[6] or API
579[7] can be utilized. This procedure is efficient when the crack appears on a simple geometry, flat plane
or cylinder for example, where the associated derivations of analytical solutions are well established for
evaluating fracture and fatigue behaviors of crack. However, if the crack is found on a complex shaped
geometry, such as a branched joint or sophisticated casting, the conventional methods become inefficient
and unusable due to the absence of an applicable analytical solution. To a certain extent, Finite element
analysis (FEA) method can be used to model a complicated geometry embedded with a crack and
determine fracture behavior of the crack; however, it lacks an efficient approach to simulate dynamic
crack growth.
 3
Therefore, XFEM is developed to bridge this gap. XFEM is a fracture mechanism-based method which is
capable of assessing both stationary crack and fatigue crack growth for arbitrary three-dimensional solid
structure. The most attractive advantage of XFEM is a feature which allows a crack not to conform to the
mesh edge such that the crack can be configured across the body of mesh and extended forwards without
the need for remeshing. The concept of XFEM will be discussed along with associated fatigue crack
growth criteria which are two core techniques used in XFEM.

Two case studies will be conducted thereafter to demonstrate the adequacy of XFEM. The first case
validates whether XFEM can correctly calculate stress intensity for a stationary crack. It involves the
calculation of stress intensity factor (SIF) for an ASTM CT specimen, and the result is validated by an
analytical solution provided in the ASTM code. Alternatively, a classic linear elastic fracture mechanics
(LEFM) method using FEA is also utilized for comparison. Following that, a second case study is
conducted to assess dynamic crack growth behavior due to cyclic load, under the effect of sleeve cold
expansion repair applied to a cracked plate. Its extended life will then be calculated and the software
Abaqus® used to execute required tasks.

XFEM Concept
XFEM was first proposed in 1999 by Belytschko and Black [1] for solving continuum mechanics problems
containing cracks. XFEM adopts non-conforming meshes to represent the crack where the nodes of
elements cut by the crack are enriched by the extra additional degrees of freedom (DOF) known as
“enrichment functions”. In Figure 2, for nodes surrounding the crack tips, as denoted by triangles, eight
additional DOFs are added, while for elements completely cut by the crack, their nodes, as illustrated by
circles, are enriched with two additional DOFs.

Figure 2 Schematic of DOFs enrichment of nodes around a crack in XFEM

The displacement approximation for crack modeling at integration points can be described as:
4

𝑢𝑥𝑓𝑒𝑚 (𝑥) = ∑ 𝑁𝑖 (𝑥)𝑢𝑖 + ∑ 𝑁𝑖 (𝑥)𝐻(𝑥)𝑎𝑖 + ∑ [𝑁𝑖 (𝑥) ∑ 𝐹𝛼 (𝑥)𝑏𝑖𝛼 ]

𝑖∈𝑃 𝑖∈𝑄 𝑖∈𝑅 𝛼=1
Where:
i Node set
= P all nodes in the mesh
= Q subset nodes belonging to elements cut by crack
= R subset nodes belonging to elements containing crack tips
4
𝑁𝑖 Conventional shape function for node i
𝑢𝑖 Conventional nodal DOF for 𝑁𝑖
H(x) Heaviside distribution for nodes of elements cut by crack
= +1 if x above crack surface
= −1 otherwise
𝐹𝛼 (𝑥) Crack tip asymptotic functions for nodes surrounding the crack tip
𝜃 𝜃 𝜃 𝜃
= {√𝑟𝑠𝑖𝑛 , √𝑟𝑐𝑜𝑠 , √𝑟𝑠𝑖𝑛𝜃𝑠𝑖𝑛 , √𝑟𝑠𝑖𝑛𝜃𝑐𝑜𝑠 } 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝛼 = 1~4
2 2 2 2
(r,𝜃) denote coordinate values from a polar coordinate system located at the crack tip
𝑎𝑖 Unknown nodal enriched DOF (jump discontinuity)
𝑏𝑖𝛼 Unknown nodal enriched DOF (crack tip enrichment)
It is noted that no nodes can be simultaneously enriched by Heaviside and crack tip asymptotic functions
since distinct discontinuity conditions are treated in different manners by XFEM. As such, the physical
displacement at any enriched node should consist of standard DOFs plus either H(xi)ai or Fα(xi)biα.
For propagating cracks, a modified method involving level set approach is utilized that level set function
Φ and Ψ are used to specify the location of the crack. Crack surface is located at Φ = 0, and crack tip is at
the intersection of Φ = 0 and Ψ = 0. The level-set functions must be updated in each increment to trace
crack geometry. [2, 3]

Fatigue Crack Growth Criterion

When simulating propagating crack in Abaqus, XFEM adopts Paris’ Law to calculate incremental crack
growth. Initially, the onset criterion of fatigue crack growth should be satisfied to initialize crack growth
which is defined as:
𝑁 > 𝐶1 ∆𝐺 𝐶2
Then, Paris’ Law, as depicted in Figure 3, is used to calculate incremental crack growth magnitude, if
imposed ΔG within Gthresh and Gpl, where the linear regime of Paris’ Law is written as:
𝑑𝑎
= 𝐶3 ∆𝐺 𝐶4
𝑑𝑁
Where:
C1 ~ C4 material constants
N Number of load cycles
G Strain energy release rate range
Gthresh Strain energy release rate threshold
Gpl Strain energy release rate upper limit
GequivC Critical equivalent strain energy release rate which is derived from GIC, GIIC, and
GIIIC using a specific combination theory, such as power law, B-K, or Reeder law.
GIC ~ GIIIC Critical energy release rate for mode I, II, and III (failure modes of opening,
shearing, and tearing, respectively)
 5

Figure 3 Schematic of Paris Law (FCGR)

Regarding crack extension orientation it can be determined in accordance with the solution-dependent
maximum tangential stress direction or set by local element directions.

Stress Intensity Factor (SIF) Calculation of Stationary Crack for ASTM Compact Test
Specimen
Before using XFEM to conduct FFS for post damage fatigue life, it must demonstrate its ability to calculate
the stress status for a stationary crack. To achieve this, it is determined that the analytical SIF solution in
ASTM E1820 [8] can be used to calibrate XFEM’s result where the use of a CT specimen is specified. A
pair of vertical tensile loads of 100,000 N will be applied to the specimen’s pin holes to open the crack. A
FEA model is generated in accordance with the dimensions of CT specimen along with selected
parameters listed in Figure 4. Four sets of crack length are selected from 55mm to 65mm which is
measured from the center of pin hole, through the machined notch, to the pre-cracked tip, in the horizontal
direction. The setting of pre-cracked segment in XFEM can be easily implemented by the level-set method
using Abaqus pre-processing function. And the corresponding ratios of crack length to CT specimen width
(a/W) are listed in Table 1.
The XFEM-calculated SIF results, shown in Table 1, give a good agreement with those given by ASTM
E-1820. All SIF deviation percentages, involving the use of two different mesh densities, are within the
error of 6% from the analytical solutions. Finer mesh can improve the accuracy of SIFs for small and
intermediate long cracks. In addition, conventional LEFM is used to calculate SIFs for reference which
also gives a good agreement. This investigation builds up the confidence that XFEM can effectively
achieve high reliable and correct SIF for the stationary crack, which is very important before we can move
forward to performing FFS assessment involving complicated fatigue crack growth behavior.
6

Figure 4 Meshed CT specimen and parameters

Parameters Magnitude Unit

Young’s Modulus 210 GPa
Poisson’s ratio 0.3 -
Full width 125 mm
Width from the center
100 mm
of pin hole (W)
Height 120 mm
Depth 50 mm
Hole Diameter 188 mm
Crack length (a) 50,55,60,65 mm
Load 100,000 N

Table 1 SIFs comparison between ASTM solution and XFEM

a/W
0.50 0.55 0.60 0.65
K
ASTM solution 6.109e7 7.187e7 8.636e7 1.066e8
XFEM (Medium. Mesh) 6.468e7 7.597e7 9.087e7 1.110e8
error % 5.87 5.71 5.22 4.10
XFEM (Fine Mesh) 6.427e7 7.502e7 9.077e7 1.125e8
error % 5.20 4.38 5.11 5.54
LEFM 5.916e7 6.944e7 8.280e7 1.012e8
error % 3.16 3.38 4.12 5.07

FFS Assessment of A Crack-Embedded Structure with Sleeve Expansion

The crack arrest hole (CAH) repair technique is widely used in aviation, civil and offshore industries to
repair structures with small cracks. This method was further refined by cold expansion technology in order
to improve fatigue life. In the early 1970s, Boeing developed a cold working technique, also known as
cold expansion fastener hole, using an oversize tapered mandrel or indenter through a CAH. Once the cold
expansion process is finished, the hole is permanently enlarged causing a benign compressive residual
stress distributed locally. A crack, when presented in this zone, may not extend if the effect of imposed
fatigue load does not offset such compressive stress. Hence, the post fatigue life can be extended. There
are diverse expansion tools available for the cold expansion process which primarily includes hole edge
expansion, direct mandrel expansion (without sleeve), ball expansion, and sleeve cold expansion.
In this paper, the performance of sleeve expansion technology is selected to investigate post damage
fatigue life through FFS assessment activity using XFEM. An example plate with a crack to calculate the
remaining fatigue life is presented herein. Figure 5 illustrates the geometry of the plate, CAH, sleeve,
mandrel, and crack. Essential design parameters are listed in Table 2. It is noted that the CAH is drilled in
front of the crack tip at a short distance. As for modeling the mandrel, the described displacement is
specified to guide the mandrel through the CAH and is set as a rigid body since it is undeformable during
the cold expansion process. On the side of the plate, the symmetric condition is used and the degree of
freedom along the tooling direction is also fixed. Contact detection is implemented between the mandrel
and the sleeve; while between the sleeve and the plate, the tie constraint is applied. The plate is
manufactured of X65 steel and the sleeve uses a similar material but has a lower yielding strength.
 7
Figure 5 Sleeve cold expansion on a plate with crack

Table 2 Essential design parameters of plate and expansion tools

Parameters Values Unit
Young’s Modulus 210 GPa
Poisson’s ratio 0.3 -
Yielding strength 448 MPa
Ultimate strength 575 MPa
Plate thickness 7.62 mm
CAH radius 6.35 mm
Sleeve inner radius 5.08 mm
Mandrel radius 5.12/5.15 mm
Crack length from edge 7.38 mm
Crack tip to CAH circumference 1.59 mm

Two configurations of oversized mandrels are selected for cold expansion which cause the sleeve and
adjacent plate to expand in a radial manner and give rise to a large plastic deformation. The representative
von Mises stress distribution during the pull-out is shown in Figure 6. Once the mandrel exits, a small
amount of rebound due to elastic deformation takes place while the plastic deformation permanently
remains in the plate. As a result, the residual stress takes place in the material as illustrated in Figure 7. In
Figure 7 (right), the black region indicates the presence of compressive residual stress component
(perpendicular to the crack surface) which is beneficial to crack closure and fatigue life.

Figure 6 von Mises stress during mandrel pull-out

8

Figure 7 Residual stress post cold expansion

(left: Mises stress, right: stress component normal to crack surface)

After the sleeve cold expansion stage, XFEM is used to simulate crack propagation due to cyclic loads
which are obtained from the design basis or projected by historical data. For the purpose of this paper, a
group of cyclic loads is used separately and shown in Table 3, which has a fluctuating stress ratio of 0.05,
applied on the sides of plate normal to the crack surface. Crack extension is implemented by using XFEM
in accordance with the SIF (K) or energy release rate (G) computed at the crack tip.

Figure 8 presents typical results of compressive stress component in loading and unloading conditions. It
can be observed that when the structure is loaded, a small plastic zone at the crack tip will occur which
incrementally stimulates the crack to propagate. In comparison of cold expansion and CAH model, the
latter exhibits a greater plastic zone yet higher stress magnitude in loading condition attributed to the
absence of compressive stress component in the unloading condition as shown in Figure 9. Figure 10
presents a close look at crack propagation in the XFEM frame work.

Figure 8 Representative Compressive Stress of Cold Expansion Model

(left: loaded, right: unloaded)

Figure 9 Representative Compressive Stress of CAH Model

(left: loaded, right: unloaded)
 9
Figure 10 Crack under propagation (left) and through-thickness crack till the sleeve (right)

The fatigue life of the cracked plate after cold expansion and CAH are presented in Table 3. The fatigue
life in this paper is defined as the number of cycles until the crack grows and becomes a cleavage of plate,
i.e. the crack surface reaches the edge of the drilled hole, intersected with the cold expansion sleeve as
illustrated in Figure 10 (right). From the results it is observed that sleeve cold expansion can improve
remaining fatigue life by at least 3.2 times compared to CAH-induced fatigue life when a 50kN cyclic
load is applied. Also, a larger mandrel diameter, resulting in greater compressive residual stress can
tolerate longer post damage operation. When imposed loads are relatively small, the crack tip only
experiences very small SIF so that the fatigue life can become infinite, which is found in two loading
cases. It is noted that whole responses exhibit high non-linearity which is attributed to FCGR’s exponent
form and extended crack geometry during cyclic load. In several cases, the crack growth rates are small
and stable in the beginning but increase as their crack lengths increase.

Table 3 Fatigue Life Results

Cyclic Load, KN 20 30 40 50
Equivalent Net Stress, MPa 69 103 138 172
CAH N/A 94636 10647 2702 1001
Sleeve Cold Expansion Mandrel 1328000 32746 11087 3214
Improvement R=5.12 14.0 3.1 4.1 3.2
Sleeve Cold Expansion Mandrel infinite infinite 31271 8140
Improvement R=5.15 N/A1 N/A2 11.6 8.1
Note 1: crack doesn’t propagate at all.
Note 2: crack extend for a short distance and then becomes stable.

Mesh Sensitivity Study on XFEM Approach

Mesh sensitivity studies were conducted to investigate influence of mesh size and element orientation.
Three different mesh sizes, orientated orthogonally, were used for ASTM CT specimens as shown in
Figure 11. The crack growth behavior was simulated with respect to a set of cyclic loads and the calculated
numbers of load cycles to cleavage can be seen in Table 4. It was observed that mesh density can affect
crack growth speed in XFEM framework. For intermediate and high magnitude cyclic loads, the results
of fatigue life converge when a medium mesh size was employed. As to the model subjected to small
cyclic loads, it was not clear which mesh density can best yield converged fatigue life. However, its
coefficient of variation of 0.15, given by very limited data set, indicated that the spread extent was
reasonably low. Additionally, a diagonally meshed model was generated with coarse elements to examine
the number of cycles to failure when a crack cut the XFEM element with a large angle. Comparison of the
remaining life between diagonal and orthogonal mesh models indicated that the former could result in two
times of the life cycles than that of the latter. These findings imply the importance of developing an
appropriate model discretization strategy in terms of element size and orientation around the crack
propagation path, and an adequate safety factor should be taken when deemed necessary. It is always
recommended that model calibration and verification are in place in order to justify XFEM results.
10
Figure 11 Selected Mesh Sizes and Orientations of ASTM CT Specimens

Orthogonal coarse mesh Orthogonal medium mesh Orthogonal fine mesh Diagonal coarse mesh

Table 4 Mesh Sensitivity Study Results

Number of cycles to cleavage
Cyclic Load Orthogonal Orthogonal Orthogonal Diagonal
(N) coarse mesh medium mesh fine mesh coarse mesh
2000 7380 9836 8477 16000
5000 1150 1580 1590 2500
10000 270 277 Not converged 650

Summary
A procedure for implementing XFEM for FFS was presented in this paper. XFEM can efficiently simulate
fatigue crack growth behavior for damaged structures. Compared to the conventional fracture mechanics
method, the results successfully verified that XFEM can derive accurate SIFs of cracks for a set of selected
crack lengths and that the results deviated from ASTM analytical solutions by less than 6%.
In the subsequent verification, FFS of the damaged structure with a crack using XFEM was conducted.
When assessing fatigue crack growth, XFEM is used to calculate the remaining number of cycles by
simulating the crack propagation process approaching the failure of structure. It is emphasized that
residual stress is critical to the crack growth since it can vary the value of SIF at the crack tip. The benign
residual compressive stresses from two mandrel diameters were diligently calculated by conventional
FEM and the results were seamlessly imported to XFEM. Lastly, the extended life was successfully
calculated using XFEM for the damaged structure, applying sleeve cold expansion and CAH repair
techniques. The result comparison revealed that cold expansion can achieve better post fatigue life than
that of CAH, and the mandrel with larger adequate diameter can help damaged structures tolerate longer
operating periods.
Regarding XFEM and the implementation for FFS assessment in life extension and damaged structures,
the XFEM method accurately determined SIF for a crack and associated post fatigue life in accordance
with the fracture mechanics approach. Also, defining and updating crack topology during crack
propagation was largely simplified by using the level-set technique which does not require the crack to
conform to the mesh edge. Finally, XFEM also shows the sufficient ability to deal with cracks located at
complex locations, and it allows a crack to change its growth direction given those advantages mentioned
above, which are deemed difficult for conventional FFS methods.
Although XFEM appears to be a good solution for FFS applications, adequate caution should be given to
the mesh size selection and mesh orientation because these may cause a slight or noticeable fluctuation of
results. Therefore, a mesh sensitivity study is recommended.
 11
References:
[1] T. Belytschko and T. Black, Elastic crack growth in finite elements with minimal remeshing. Int. J.
Numer. Meth. Engng, 1999; 45 601-20
[2] T. Fries and T. Belytschko, The extended/generalized finite element method: an overview of the
method and its applications. Int. J. Numer. Meth. Engng 2000; 00:1–6
[3] Simulia Abaqus documentation.
[4] Prof. Ali Fatemi’s Seminars on www.efatigue.com/training
[5] K Rege and H G Lemu, A review of fatigue crack propagation modelling techniques using FEA and
XFEM. IOPConf. Ser.: Mater. Sci. Eng., 2017; 276 012027.
[6] BS 7910, Guide to methods for assessing the acceptability of flaws in metallic structures.
[7] API 579-1/ASME FFS-1, Fitness-for Service.
[8] ASTM E1820, Standard Test Method for Measurement of Fracture Toughness.