Element deletion in Abaqus/standard

[Abhiram]

Hi, I am trying to simulate a crack initiation experiment in Abaqus/standard. I am using a UMAT to define my material property. I want to delete the elements when the J-integral value reaches a certain value but I dont know how to do it. I tried hte 'Depvar' option in material definition but that works only for explicit models. Could anyone tell me how to delete elements in Abaqus/standard.

Thank you,
Abhiram.

[lumpwood]

There's no straight-forward way to do this in Abaqus standard as it would be difficult to get convergence with element removal. Either have a look at using the XFEM capabilities in the newer versions of Abaqus or reduce the stiffness of chosen elements in the UMAT and hope for the best.