Modelling moving discontinuity using XFEM

Greeting to all iMechanicians,

I am trying to model motion of discontinuity (grain boundary) using XFEM as it saves me from the computational expense required for mesh adaptation. The material behaviour on the both sides of the discontinuity is different. After any step the discontinuity might cut through an element. Then to compute the stiffness of the element I will have to integrate seperately for the splitted regions and then add them. This is easy when I have a 1-D case but seems difficult for 2-D and 3-D case. Since the discontinuity may take any arbitrary shape, I will have to find out the points in the element that lie on either side of it for which I can use signed distance function. But how do I implement this in ABAQUS. I have a vague idea that I might have to use UEL or UMAT. If somebody has faced a similar situation, please help me out.

Best regards,

Luv