A discrete crack approach to normal/shear cracking of concrete

This paper presents a numerical procedure for mixed mode fracture of quasi-brittle materials. The numerical procedure is based on the cohesive crack approach and extends it to mixed mode fracture. The crack path is obtained, and the mixed mode fracture model is incorporated into the crack path. The crack model is based on the formulation of the classical plasticity. The model is incorporated into a commercial finite element code by an user subroutine and is contrasted with experimental results. The numerical results agree quite well with two experimental sets of mixed mode fracture of concrete beams; one from Arrea and Ingraffea, the other from a nonproportional loading by the authors. Two other sets of experimental fracture results were modeled based on double-edge notched testing. The numerical procedure, mainly based on standard properties of the material measured by standard methods, predicts the experimental records of the load versus displacement at several control points of the specimens for three homothetic sizes of specimen. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.