Local Maximum Entropy Material Point Method applied to quasi-brittle fracture

Abstract This work aims to introduce an alternative technique to address the fracture process of brittle and quasi-brittle materials under the Material Point Method (MPM) framework. With this purpose the eigensoftening algorithm, developed originally for the Optimal Transportation Meshfree (OTM) approximation scheme, is extended to the MPM to present a suitable alternative to the existing fracture algorithms developed for such a methodology. The good fitting in the predictions made by the eigensoftening algorithm against both analytical and experimental results proves the excellent performance of the method when challenging applications are to model.