Zencrack provides a variety of options for input of material and crack growth data. This includes temperature dependency and, for fatigue crack growth, dependency on stress ratio.

Multiple materials may be defined to allow growth prediction of cracks in different materials within the same component.

The basic material data that can be defined in the Zencrack input file are values for Young's modulus and Poisson ratio. These are used to convert between stress intensity factors and energy release rates. In addition, plane strain and plane stress fracture toughness can be provided along with yield stress. The fracture toughness values are used to determine failure and also also needed for some built-in crack growth laws. The yield stress is used if retardation modelling is activated. All of these materials properties may be temperature dependent. The temperature for each crack front node is extracted from the finite element analysis and used in lookups into the material data.

Additional temperature dependent data, not directly relevant to Zencrack, may be included in the finite element model. For example, temperature dependent thermal expansion coefficient in a stress analysis or film coefficients in a heat transfer analysis.

For a crack growth analysis the additional material data in the form of a crack growth law can be as simple or complex as is required for the analysis being carried out (e.g. Paris law through to proprietary data). Separate information is provided for fatigue and time dependent crack growth data.