Hello every body. 

I am going to do fatigue analysis in Abaqus/cae, i have been use direct cycle method and create xfem crack in domain. for fracture criterion i used bk mode and 3 mode of fracture energy (for steel about 16000 j/m^2). when i run the analysis, crack in my domain sudenly propagate (about 60 cycles) and i think the resistance of steel is actually more than this value. i want to know this method for fatigue analysis in actually is courect? and i want to know what is the best method for validating a fatigue analysis use abaqus/cae?
best regard