TY - JOUR AB - The behaviour of cracked finite elements is investigated. It is shown that spurious kinematic modes may emerge when softening type constitutive laws are employed. These modes are not always suppressed by surrounding elements. This is exemplified for a double‐notched concrete beam and for a Crack‐Line‐Wedge‐Loaded Double‐Cantilever‐Beam (CLWL—DCB). The latter example has been analysed for a large variety of finite elements and integration schemes. To investigate the phenomenon in greater depth an eigenvalue analysis has been carried out for some commonly used finite elements. VL - 6 IS - 4 SN - 0264-4401 DO - 10.1108/eb023782 UR - https://doi.org/10.1108/eb023782 AU - de Borst René AU - Rots Jan G. PY - 1989 Y1 - 1989/01/01 TI - Occurrence of spurious mechanisms in computations of strain‐softening solids T2 - Engineering Computations PB - MCB UP Ltd SP - 272 EP - 280 Y2 - 2024/04/25 ER -