ABSTRACT
For many problems encountered within the defence industry (and many others), numerical modelling has suffered from one principal weakness: for many applications the associated deformed finite element mesh can no longer provide an accurate description of the deformed material, whether due to large ductile deformation, or for the case of brittle materials, degradation into multiple bodies.

Therefore, the primary objective of this paper is to present a methodology demonstrating the potential benefits of explicitly coupling adaptive remeshing methods to the technique of discrete fracture insertion, in order to provide an adaptive discontinuous solution strategy that is computationally robust and efficient. The proposed numerical approach has been incorporated into the finite and discrete element code ELFEN.