In this blog post I thought we would take a small dip into modeling fracture and failure with Abaqus. In conventional FEM methods for crack propagation, the initial crack location needs to be predefined. This is not necessary when using extended Finite Element Method (XFEM). XFEM uses enrichment terms to the normal displacement interpolation to describe the crack behavior.

We've previously discussed about modeling cracks using conventional approaches and XFEM. I thought it would be nice to revisit this topic, focusing mainly on XFEM approach on a familiar geometry: the hip implant from the previous geometry and meshing blog.