The rs-method for material failure simulations

A new method for propagating arbitrary failure modes is presented. Arbitrary failure modes are resolved on a refined local patch of elements and then embedded into the coarse grid using partition of unity method. Strong discontinuities are propagated by means of element erosion in the superimposed patch of elements only. The method, coined as the rs-version of the finite element method (or reduced order s-method), has been integrated in ABAQUS and verified on several test problems. Copyright (c) 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.