Arbitrary branched and intersecting cracks with the extended finite element method

Extensions of a new technique for the nite element modelling of cracks with multiple branches, multiple holes and cracks emanating from holes are presented. This extended nite element method (X-FEM) allows the representation of crack discontinuities and voids independently of the mesh. A standard displacementbased approximation is enriched by incorporating discontinuous elds through a partition of unity method. A methodology that constructs the enriched approximation based on the interaction of the discontinuous geometric features with the mesh is developed. Computation of the stress intensity factors (SIF) in di erent examples involving branched and intersecting cracks as well as cracks emanating from holes are presented to demonstrate the accuracy and the robustness of the proposed technique