You can study the onset of cracking in a quasi-static model by selecting regions from your model that will be used to compute contour integral estimates. During the analysis Abaqus/Standard writes the values of the contour integrals to the output database as history output. For a detailed description of contour integrals, see “Contour integral evaluation,” Section 11.4.2 of the Abaqus Analysis User's Guide. This section describes how you define a crack in Abaqus/CAE. The following topics are covered:

• “An overview of contour integral analysis,” Section 31.2.1

• “Defining the crack front,” Section 31.2.2

• “Defining the crack tip or crack line,” Section 31.2.3

• “Defining the crack extension direction,” Section 31.2.4

• “Controlling the singularity at the crack tip for a small-strain analysis,” Section 31.2.5

• “Contour integral output,” Section 31.2.6

• “Meshing the crack region and assigning elements,” Section 31.2.7

• “Controlling the singularity at the crack tip,” Section 31.2.8

• “Creating a contour integral crack,” Section 31.2.9

• “Modifying data for contour integrals,” Section 31.2.10

• “Requesting contour integral output,” Section 31.2.11