Enhanced fictitious crack model accounting for material drawn into the cohesive zone : physically based crack closure criterion
According to the fictitious crack model, the crack width is infinitely thin at crack initiation and with further loading the crack opens, but no material exists in the cohesive zone. Despite that, the crack is assumed to able to sustain a load. While this is possible at the atomic level, it is not a realistic assumption for the macroscopic behavior we are considering. Invoking the mass conservatio
