Discrete crack model based on nodal duplication for nonlinear analysis of concrete structures

Resumo

Concrete is classified as a quasi-brittle material and exhibit a gradual decline in response of the stress-
strain law in inelastic regime. Upon reaching its strength limit, this material starts to crack. This cracking process

critically influences the material’s response in its state of stress, which makes crack evaluation an important factor
in the analysis of concrete structures. A numerical strategy that can be used to analyze cracks is the Finite Element
Method and the cracks can be classified as smeared and discrete. The smeared approach considers that a set of
small size cracks are distributed along the finite element. In the discrete approach, which will be used in this work,
the crack is considered a geometric discontinuity in the finite element mesh and its analysis involves the following

essential keys: a constitutive model for describing the material; a crack propagation criterion; an adequate proce-
dure for remeshing, and an efficient technique for solving a system of nonlinear equations. This work proposes

the implementation of a discrete cohesive crack model with mesh redefining based on nodal duplication capable of
evaluating the crack behaviour in concrete beams subjected to bending.