Abstract The hybrid Lagrangian/Eulerian formulation of continuum shells is highly effective for producing challenging simulations of thin materials like cloth with bending resistance and frictional contact. However, existing formulations are restricted to materials that do not undergo tearing nor fracture due to the difficulties associated with incorporating strong discontinuities of field quantities like velocity via basis enrichment while maintaining continuity or regularity. We propose an extension of this formulation to simulate dynamic tearing and fracturing of thin shells using Kirchhoff–Love continuum theory. Damage, which manifests as cracks or tears, is propagated by tracking the evolution of a time‐dependent phase‐field in the co‐dimensional manifold, where a moving least‐squares (MLS) approximation then captures the strong discontinuities of interpolated field quantities near the crack. Our approach is capable of simulating challenging scenarios of this tearing and fracture, all‐the‐while harnessing the existing benefits of the hybrid Lagrangian/Eulerian formulation to expand the domain of possible effects. The method is also amenable to user‐guided control, which serves to influence the propagation of cracks or tears such that they follow prescribed paths during simulation.

Large-scale topological changes play a key role in capturing the fine debris of fracturing virtual brittle material. Real-world, tough brittle fractures have dynamic branching behaviour but numerical simulation of this phenomena is notoriously challenging. In order to robustly capture these visual characteristics, we simulate brittle fracture by combining elastodynamic continuum mechanical models with rigid-body methods: A continuum damage mechanics (CDM) problem is solved, following rigid-body impact, to simulate crack propagation by tracking a damage field. We combine the result of this elastostatic continuum model with a novel technique to approximate cracks as a non-manifold mid-surface, which enables accurate and robust modelling of material fragment volumes to compliment fast-and-rigid shatter effects. For enhanced realism, we add fracture detail, incorporating particle damage-time to inform localised perturbation of the crack surface with artistic control. We evaluate our method with numerous examples and comparisons, showing that it produces a breadth of brittle material fracture effects and with low simulation resolution to require much less time compared to fully elastodynamic simulations.