“…In these methods, such as the gradient-enhanced damage model and its variants [8,51,52,61], and the phase-field model (PFM) [3,21,44], a sharp crack is approximated by a diffuse damage band thanks to introducing a length-scale parameter that controls interactions between material points. Generalizing Griffith's theory, PFMs have emerged as variational fracture models to adequately predict the crack initiation, propagation, and branching [1,2,54,65,67]. In these models, a fracture can be revisited as the minimization of the potential energy consisting of the stored bulk energy, the work of external forces, and the surface energy.…”