I am currently looking into XFEM within Abaqus CAE. I am trying to make sense of how the software decides on the number of XFEM points that the model will use, specifically in embedded cracks. Within the .dat file that Abaqus outputs, for the crack tip location, for through thickness cracks it seems to create an XFEM point for the crack tip location for each element that exists through the thickness, that the crack crosses, but for embedded cracks I can’t seem to find any correlation.