Progressive Damage in Quasi-brittle Solids

Abstract

We present a model of material degradation relying upon a local damage law supplemented by convex constraints. This results in a damage model with bounded variation that is shown to share the same features of the so-called Thick Level Set approach. Unlike the original model, in the present formulation the level set-based representation is abandoned in favor of an implicit description of damaged regions, whereby one arrives at a non-local Generalized Standard Model with convex constraints. The solution of a one-dimensional problem demonstrate the capabilities of the proposed approach when simulating initiation and growth of damage in quasi-brittle materials.