说明：  The seminar will discuss how the extended finite element method (XFEM) is implemented and used in the commercially available finite element software ABAQUS with focus on crack propagation modeling. XFEM is a recent addition to ABAQUS that allows the crack geometry to be independent of the part mesh. This is quite useful for analyzing crack growth because it bypasses the need to re-mesh the crack tip region for every crack growth increment. The concepts of level set method, phantom node approach, and cohesive segments method, which are required for XFEM modeling, will also be discussed. Further the implementation of user subroutine to implement user required damage criteria will be discussed. Open discussions about any XFEM related issue will follow