  Decohesion undergoing large displacements takes place in a wide range of
applications. In these problems, interface element formulations for large
displacements should be used to accurately deal with coupled material and
geometrical nonlinearities. The present work proposes a consistent derivation
of a new interface element for large deformation analyses. The resulting
compact derivation leads to a operational formulation that enables the
accommodation of any order of kinematic interpolation and constitutive behavior
of the interface. The derived interface element has been implemented into the
finite element codes FEAP and ABAQUS by means of user-defined routines. The
interplay between geometrical and material nonlinearities is investigated by
considering two different constitutive models for the interface (tension
cut-off and polynomial cohesive zone models) and small or finite deformation
for the continuum. Numerical examples are proposed to assess the mesh
independency of the new interface element and to demonstrate the robustness of
the formulation. A comparison with experimental results for peeling confirms
the predictive capabilities of the formulation.
