A concurrent multiscale method for simulation of crack propagation

A concurrent multiscale method is developed for simulating quasi-static crack propagation in which the failure processes occur in only a small portion of the structure. For this purpose, a multiscale model is adopted and both scales are discretized with finite-element meshes. The extended finite element method is employed to take into account the propagation of discontinuities on the fine-scale subregions. At the same time, for the other subregions, the coarse-scale mesh is employed and is resolved by using the extended multiscale finite element method. Several representative numerical examples are given to verify the validity of the method.