An Adaptive Finite Element Approximation of a Variational Model of Brittle Fracture

Abstract. The energy of the Francfort–Marigo model of brittle fracture can be approximated, in the sense of Γ-convergence, by the Ambrosio–Tortorelli functional. In this work we formulate and analyze two adaptive finite element algorithms for the computation of its (local) minimizers. For each algorithm we combine a Newton-type method with residual-driven adaptive mesh refinement. We present two theoretical results which demonstrate convergence of our algorithms to local minimizers of the Ambrosio–Tortorelli functional.