A medial‐axis‐based model for propagating cracks in a regularised bulk

Summary A new continuous‐discontinuous strategy for the simulation of failure is presented. The continuous bulk is regularised by means of a gradient‐enhanced damage model, where non‐locality is introduced at the level of displacements. As soon as the damage parameter is close or equal to 1, a traction‐free crack is introduced. To determine the direction of crack growth, a new criterion is proposed. In contrast to traditional techniques, where mechanical criteria are used to define the crack path, here, a geometrical approach is used. More specifically, given a regularised damage field D ( x ), we propose to propagate the discontinuity following the direction dictated by the medial axis of the isoline (or isosurface in 3D) D ( x ) = D *. The proposed approach is tested on different two‐dimensional and three‐dimensional examples that illustrate that this combined methodology is able to deal with damage growth and material separation. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.