This important textbook provides an introduction to the concepts of the newly developed extended finite element method (XFEM) for fracture analysis of structures, as well as for other related engineering applications.

One of the main advantages of the method is that it avoids any need for remeshing or geometric crack modelling in numerical simulation, while generating discontinuous fields along a crack and around its tip. The second major advantage of the method is that by a small increase in number of degrees of freedom, far more accurate solutions can be obtained. The method has recently been extended to nonlinear materials and other disciplines such as modelling contact and interface, simulation of inclusions and holes, moving and changing phase problems, and even to multiscale analyses.

The book is self contained, with summaries of both classical and modern computational techniques. The main chapters include a comprehensive range of numerical examples describing various features of XFEM.

Soheil Mohammadi is Associate Professor in the School of Civil Engineering at the University of Tehran. He has published in a wide range of journals, addressing theoretical aspects as well as practical applications, and has written one previous book: Discontinuum Mechanics using Finite and Discrete Elements 2003 WIT Press. He gained his PhD in Civil Engineering (Computational Mechanics) from the University of Wales Swansea.