Dear Biswabhanu,

Yes, you can model multiple cracks in the XFEM method.

Dear Biswabhanu Puhan

Cohesive elements, implemented through the UEL interface, can be used to model crack propagation in Abaqus. With this technique, the cracks can merge and branch. That depends on the potential crack paths that you assign by including the cohesive elements in certain regions.

You can see a recent example here:

Article Coupling a discrete twin model with cohesive elements to und...

and here:

Article Neper2CAE and PyCiGen: Scripts to generate polycrystals and ...

The UEL for cohesive elements with bilinear traction separation law is available here:

https://github.com/TarletonGroup/CrystalPlasticity

And the code to generate interface elements is available here:

https://github.com/ngrilli/PyCiGen

Please cite our works if you want them useful.

Best Regards,

Nicolò Grilli

University of Bristol