Modeling Cohesive Cracks with Meshless Method

We present a discrete rotating crack method embedded in the elementfree Galerkin method. The crack is represented by discrete cohesive crack segments only passing through nodes. The discrete crack segments are introduced when the tensile strength in the material is exceeded and the crack segments are oriented perpendicular to the direction of the maximum principal stress. The orientation of the crack segments are rotated when directional changes in the maximum principal stress occur. It will be shown that fixed crack models lead to over-smearing the crack and too stiff responses of the system. The advantage of this method is that no representation of the crack surface is needed.