Saurabh Y.

In this work, a simple and efficient XFEM approach has been presented to solve 3-D crack problems in linear elastic materials. In XFEM, displacement approximation is enriched by additional functions using the concept of partition of unity. In the proposed approach, a crack front is divided into a number of piecewise curve segments to avoid an iterative solution. A nearest point on the crack front from an arbitrary (Gauss) point is obtained for each crack segment. In crack front elements, the level set funct