README – Research Data (last modified 7 November 2025 by Bradley Sims)

This repository contains the supporting research data associated with the article:

'Including pre-existing fractures in phase field fracture models'
Authors: Bradley Sims, Robert E. Bird, William M. Coombs, Stefano Giani
Journal: International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/nme.70181

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Contents

The repository includes a contains multiple CSV files, each corresponding to a specific figure in the paper.

File Structure
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Each CSV file is named according to the figure it supports and is stored within a folder relating to the Figure as a whole. For example:

  ├── Figure 6/
  │     ├── Fig 6a.csv
  │     ├── Fig 6b.csv
  ├── Figure 8/
  │     ├── Fig 8a.csv
  │     ├── ...
  ├── Figure 9/
  │     ├── Fig 9.csv
  ├── Figure 10/
  │     ├── Fig 10a.csv
  │     ├── Fig 10b.csv
  ├── ...


Each file contains the raw or processed data used to generate the corresponding figure in the paper.

File Format
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All files are in CSV (comma-separated values) format and can be opened with any text editor, spreadsheet software (e.g., Excel, LibreOffice), or data analysis tool (e.g., Python, R, MATLAB, Julia).

Headers in each CSV describe the variables plotted. See the paper’s figure captions for interpretation.

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Funding

The first author was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), Grant Number
EP/W524426/1. The second author was supported by the EPSRC, Grant Number EP/W000970/1.

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Licence

Access to this dataset is provided under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY) licence.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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Citation

If you use this data, please cite:

Sims, B., Bird, R. E., Coombs, W. M. & Giani, S. (2026). Including pre-existing fractures in phase field fracture models [Dataset]. Durham University. 

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Contact

For any questions regarding this dataset, please contact the corresponding author:  
Professor William M. Coombs – w.m.coombs@durham.ac.uk
