Peridynamics is a
non-local formulation of
continuum mechanics
Continuum mechanics is a branch of mechanics that deals with the deformation of and transmission of forces through materials modeled as a ''continuous medium'' (also called a ''continuum'') rather than as discrete particles.
Continuum mec ...
that is oriented toward
deformations with discontinuities, especially
fracture
Fracture is the appearance of a crack or complete separation of an object or material into two or more pieces under the action of stress (mechanics), stress. The fracture of a solid usually occurs due to the development of certain displacemen ...
s. Originally, ''bond-based'' peridynamic was introduced,
wherein, internal interaction forces between a material point and all the other ones with which it can interact, are modeled as a central
force field. This type of force field can be imagined as a mesh of bonds connecting each point of the body with every other interacting point within a certain distance which depends on a material property, called the ''peridynamic horizon''. Later, to overcome bond-based framework limitations for the material
Poisson's ratio
In materials science and solid mechanics, Poisson's ratio (symbol: ( nu)) is a measure of the Poisson effect, the deformation (expansion or contraction) of a material in directions perpendicular to the specific direction of loading. The value ...
(
for
plane stress and
for
plane strain in two-dimesional configurations;
for three-dimensional ones), ''state-base'' peridynamics, has been formulated.
Its characteristic feature is that the force exchanged between a point and another one is influenced by the deformation state of all other bonds relative to its interaction zone.
The characteristic feature of peridynamics, which makes it different from classical local mechanics, is the presence of finite-range bonds between any two points of the material body: it is a feature that approaches such formulations as discrete meso-scale theories of matter.
Etymology
The term ''peridynamic'', as an adjective, was proposed in the year 2000 and comes from the prefix ''peri-'', which means ''all around'', ''near'', or ''surrounding''; and the root ''dyna'', which means ''force'' or ''power''. The term ''peridynamics'', as a noun, is a shortened form of the phrase ''peridynamic model of solid mechanics.''
Purpose
A fracture is a
mathematical singularity
In mathematics, a singularity is a point at which a given mathematical object is not defined, or a point where the mathematical object ceases to be well-behaved in some particular way, such as by lacking differentiability or analyticity.
For exa ...
to which the classical equations of
continuum mechanics
Continuum mechanics is a branch of mechanics that deals with the deformation of and transmission of forces through materials modeled as a ''continuous medium'' (also called a ''continuum'') rather than as discrete particles.
Continuum mec ...
cannot be applied directly. The peridynamic theory has been proposed with the purpose of mathematically models fractures formation and dynamic in elastic materials.
It is founded on
integral equation
In mathematical analysis, integral equations are equations in which an unknown function appears under an integral sign. In mathematical notation, integral equations may thus be expressed as being of the form: f(x_1,x_2,x_3,\ldots,x_n ; u(x_1,x_2 ...
s, in contrast with classical continuum mechanics, which is based on
partial differential equation
In mathematics, a partial differential equation (PDE) is an equation which involves a multivariable function and one or more of its partial derivatives.
The function is often thought of as an "unknown" that solves the equation, similar to ho ...
s. Since
partial derivative
In mathematics, a partial derivative of a function of several variables is its derivative with respect to one of those variables, with the others held constant (as opposed to the total derivative, in which all variables are allowed to vary). P ...
s do not exist on crack surfaces
and other geometric
singularities, the classical equations of
continuum mechanics
Continuum mechanics is a branch of mechanics that deals with the deformation of and transmission of forces through materials modeled as a ''continuous medium'' (also called a ''continuum'') rather than as discrete particles.
Continuum mec ...
cannot be applied directly when such features are present in a
deformation. The integral equations of the peridynamic theory hold true also on singularities and can be applied directly, because they do not require partial derivatives. The ability to apply the same equations directly at all points in a mathematical model of a deforming structure helps the peridynamic approach to avoid the need for the special techniques of
fracture mechanics
Fracture mechanics is the field of mechanics concerned with the study of the propagation of cracks in materials. It uses methods of analytical solid mechanics to calculate the driving force on a crack and those of experimental solid mechanics t ...
like
xFEM
The extended finite element method (XFEM), is a numerical technique based on the generalized finite element method (GFEM) and the Partition of unity, partition of unity method (PUM). It extends the classical finite element method (FEM) approach b ...
.
For example, in peridynamics, there is no need for a separate crack growth law based on a
stress intensity factor
In fracture mechanics, the stress intensity factor () is used to predict the Stress (mechanics), stress state ("stress intensity") near the tip of a Fracture, crack or Notch (engineering), notch caused by a remote load or residual stresses. It i ...
.
Definition and basic terminology

In the context of peridynamic theory, physical bodies are treated as constituted by a continuous points mesh which can exchange long-range mutual interaction forces, within a maximum and well established distance
: the ''peridynamic horizon'' radius. This perspective approaches much more to
molecular dynamics
Molecular dynamics (MD) is a computer simulation method for analyzing the Motion (physics), physical movements of atoms and molecules. The atoms and molecules are allowed to interact for a fixed period of time, giving a view of the dynamics ( ...
than
macroscopic
The macroscopic scale is the length scale on which objects or phenomena are large enough to be visible with the naked eye, without magnifying optical instruments. It is the opposite of microscopic.
Overview
When applied to physical phenome ...
bodies, and as a consequence, is not based on the concept of
stress tensor (which is a local concept) and drift toward the notion of ''pairwise force'' that a material point
exchanges within its peridynamic horizon. With a
Lagrangian point of view, suited for small displacements, the peridynamic horizon is considered fixed in the reference configuration and, then, deforms with the body.
Consider a material body represented by
, where
can be either 1, 2 or 3. The body has a positive
density
Density (volumetric mass density or specific mass) is the ratio of a substance's mass to its volume. The symbol most often used for density is ''ρ'' (the lower case Greek letter rho), although the Latin letter ''D'' (or ''d'') can also be u ...
. Its reference configuration at the initial time is denoted by
. It is important to note that the reference configuration can either be the
stress-free configuration or a specific configuration of the body chosen as a reference. In the context of peridynamics, every point in
interacts with all the points
within a certain neighborhood defined by
, where
and
represents a suitable
distance
Distance is a numerical or occasionally qualitative measurement of how far apart objects, points, people, or ideas are. In physics or everyday usage, distance may refer to a physical length or an estimation based on other criteria (e.g. "two co ...
function on
. This neighborhood is often referred to as
in the literature. It is commonly known as the ''horizon''
or the ''family'' of
.
The kinematics of
is described in terms of its displacement from the reference position, denoted as
. Consequently, the position of
at a specific time
is determined by
. Furthermore, for each pair of interacting points, the change in the length of the bond relative to the initial configuration is tracked over time through the relative
strain , which can be expressed as:
where
denotes the
Euclidean norm
Euclidean space is the fundamental space of geometry, intended to represent physical space. Originally, in Euclid's ''Elements'', it was the three-dimensional space of Euclidean geometry, but in modern mathematics there are ''Euclidean spaces'' ...
and
.
The interaction between any
and
is referred to as a ''bond''. These pairwise bonds have varying lengths over time in response to the force per unit volume squared, denoted as
.
This force is commonly known as the ''pairwise force function'' or ''peridynamic
kernel'', and it encompasses all the
constitutive (material-dependent) properties. It describes how the internal forces depend on the deformation. It's worth noting that the dependence of
on
has been omitted here for the sake of simplicity in notation. Additionally, an external forcing term,
, is introduced, which results in the following equation of motion, representing the fundamental equation of peridynamics:
where the integral term
is the sum of all of the internal and external per-unit-volume forces acting on
:
The
vector
Vector most often refers to:
* Euclidean vector, a quantity with a magnitude and a direction
* Disease vector, an agent that carries and transmits an infectious pathogen into another living organism
Vector may also refer to:
Mathematics a ...
valued
function is the force density that
exerts on
. This force density depends on the relative displacement and relative position vectors between
and
. The
dimension
In physics and mathematics, the dimension of a mathematical space (or object) is informally defined as the minimum number of coordinates needed to specify any point within it. Thus, a line has a dimension of one (1D) because only one coo ...
of
is