Extended finite element method for dynamic fracture of piezo-electric materials

► Extension of the XFEM to dynamic fracture of piezo-electric materials. ► The method is compared to results of the boundary element method (BEM). ► Results show excellent agreement with results of the BEM. ► The method will be extended to inverse problems. We present an extended finite element formulation for dynamic fracture of piezo-electric materials. The method is developed in the context of linear elastic fracture mechanics. It is applied to mode I and mixed mode-fracture for quasi-steady cracks. An implicit time integration scheme is exploited. The results are compared to results obtained with the boundary element method and show excellent agreement.