If an element supports birth and death, it is indicated in the “Special Features” section of the documentation for that element.

User-defined elements can also be given the birth and death capability.

In some circumstances, an element's birth and death status depend upon a program-calculated quantity, such as temperature, stress, and strain. You can issue commands such as ETABLE and ESEL to determine the value of such quantities in selected elements, and to change the status (melted, solidified, ruptured, etc.) of those elements accordingly. This capability is useful for modeling effects due to phase changes (as in welding processes, when structurally inactive molten material solidifies and becomes structurally active), failure-surface propagation, and other analysis-dependent element changes.