A COMBINED EXTENDED AND EDGE-BASED SMOOTHED FINITE ELEMENT METHOD (ES-XFEM) FOR FRACTURE ANALYSIS OF 2D ELASTICITY

This study combines the edge-based smoothed finite element method (ES-FEM) and the extended finite element method (XFEM) to develop a new simulation technique (ES-XFEM) for fracture analysis of 2D elasticity. In the XFEM, the need for the mesh alignment with the crack and remeshing, as the crack evolves, is eliminated because of the use of partition of unity. The ES-FEM uses the generalized smoothing operation over smoothing domain associated...