I am working on crack propagation . I am trying to figure what factors should be taken into account when the crack is being propagated using XFEM.

I am especially interested to know what happens to the additional dof's corresponding to enriched nodes. Once the crack is propagated and crack tip is at new location , we add new dof's corresponding to enrichment functions , but what happens to the information stored by the dof's of previous enriched nodes,do we forget them altotgether , or do we map it to the new enriched nodes?

Hi All :

I was wondering why some people prefer to use Non Local Model while some others use Implicit Gradient Model (which can be derived from Non Local Model) .

When implicit Gradient Model is itself derived from Non Local Model ,and its FE implimentation just involves an additional average to be calculated and what is the need to introduce gradient terms ??

Thanks Alot

Kapil 

Hi to all :

This is my first blog entry . And I have only recently started my Research work (just 2 months) .So please bear with me my lack of thorough knowledge in the topic .

What I want to know is "what is the impact of the papers on Asynchronous Variational Integrators and Variational Integrators (published in 2003) ?" I mean what I was wondering is given that they have so many beneficial properties , how many researcher have actually started using this technique of time integration in their research .