“…This modelling strategy was originally proposed in Xu and Needleman (1994), and allows for the robust simulation of crack patterns at arbitrary locations and in arbitrary directions. It naturally includes the effects of crack bifurcation, crack branching and crack coalescence, as previously demonstrated for applications related to historical paints (Eumelen et al, 2019(Eumelen et al, , 2020(Eumelen et al, , 2021, wood (Luimes et al, 2018;Scheperboer et al, 2019;Luimes and Suiker, 2021), polymers (Tijssens et al, 2000), fibrous composites (Cid Alfaro et al, 2010a,b;Geng and Suiker, 2019) and cementitious materials (Scheperboer et al, 2021). The interface elements are characterised by the interface damage model proposed in Cid Alfaro et al (2009).…”