| Abstract: | The transition from microscale damage phenomena to crack initiation and growth at the macroscale is an important mechanism which constrains the lifetime of concrete structures. Analysing crack growth using the finite element method without enhancement of the shape functions is possible only by continuously updating the corresponding meshes, which constitutes a significant computational effort. But even then the results can be substantially mesh–dependent and hard to interpret. The extended Finite Element Method (XFEM) uses additional discontinuous shape–functions and is one possibility to overcome these problems. (© 2004 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim) |
