Extended Finite Element Method for hygro-mechanical analysis of crack propagation in porous materials

In computational structural analyses, strong discontinuities, such as propagating cracks in concrete structures, joints in rocks or shear bands in soft soils, the highly accelerated moisture transport in the opening discontinuities has to be taken into account. The paper is concerned with an Extended Finite Element model for the numerical representation of crack propagation in partially saturated porous materials. Based on an extended variational formulation for the simulation of moisture transport in cracks, enhanced approximations of the displacement field and the moisture flux across the discontinuity are adopted. (© 2011 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)