Continuum approach to the numerical simulation of material failure in concrete

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: [Oliver, J., Huespe, A.E., Samaniego, E. and Chaves, E.W.V. (2004), Continuum approach to the numerical simulation of material failure in concrete. Int. J. Numer. Anal. Meth. Geomech., 28: 609-632. doi:10.1002/nag.365], which has been published in final form at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/nag.365. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.Some new aspects of the continuum strong discontinuity approach (CSDA) to model material failure in geomaterials are addressed. A new global algorithm, for tracking multiple crack lines/surfaces in 2D/3D cases is proposed. It is based on solving a simple heat conduction-like problem accompanying the standard mechanical algorithm. A viscous perturbation method on the crack surface is also proposed to remedy the instabilities caused by mutual interactions of multiple developing cracks. A simple procedure to compute the critical time step that ensures algorithmic uniqueness is then provided. Numerical simulations of two- and three-dimensional problems displaying a multi-crack pattern are finally presented.Financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology, through grant MAT2001-3863-C03-03, and from the Catalan Government Research Department, through the CIRIT grant 2001-SGR 00262, is gratefully acknowledged.Peer Reviewe