Phase-field model of brittle fracture in Reissner–Mindlin plates and shells

In this paper, a phase-field model is presented for the description of brittle fracture in a Reissner–Mindlin plate and shell formulation. The shell kinematics as well as the phase-field variable are described on the midsurface of the structure. Non-Uniform Rational B-Spline basis functions are used for the discretization of both the displacement/rotations and the phase-field. The spectral decomposition for the tension–compression split is...