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Crack Approach (crack + approach)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Engineering	80%

Selected Abstracts

A Comparison of Conventional Local Approach and the Short Crack Approach to Fatigue Crack Initiation at a Notch,

ADVANCED ENGINEERING MATERIALS, Issue 9 2009
Narayanaswami Ranganathan
Methods to estimate fatigue crack initiation life at a notch tip are compared. The methods used determine the strain amplitudes at the notch tip using Neuber's or Glinka's approximation. In conventional approaches, equivalent-damage levels are determined, using appropriate strain-life relationships coupled with damage-summation models. In the short-crack approach, a crack-like defect is assumed to exist at the notch tip. It is shown that the short-crack concept can be successfully applied to predict crack-initiation behavior at a notch. Model predictions are compared with carefully designed experiments. It is shown that model predictions are very close to experimentally measured lives under an aircraft-wing loading spectrum. [source]

Non-linear behavior of mass concrete in three-dimensional problems using a smeared crack approach

EARTHQUAKE ENGINEERING AND STRUCTURAL DYNAMICS, Issue 3 2005
H. Mirzabozorg
Abstract A smeared crack approach has been proposed to model the static and dynamic behavior of mass concrete in three-dimensional space. The proposed model simulates the tensile fracture on the mass concrete and contains pre-softening behavior, softening initiation, fracture energy conservation and strain rate effects under dynamic loads. The validity of the proposed model has been checked using the available experimental results under static and dynamic loads. The direct and indirect displacement control algorithms have been employed under incremental increasing static loads. It was found that the proposed model gives excellent results and crack profiles when compared with the available data under static loads. The Koyna Dam in India has been used to verify the dynamic behavior of the proposed model. It was found that the resulting crack profiles were in good agreement with the available experimental results. Finally, the Morrow Point Dam was analyzed, including the dam,reservoir interaction effects, to consider its non-linear seismic behavior. It was found that the resulting crack profiles were in good agreement with the contour of maximum principal stresses and no numerical instability occurred during the analysis. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Smeared crack approach: back to the original track

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR NUMERICAL AND ANALYTICAL METHODS IN GEOMECHANICS, Issue 12 2006
M. Cervera
Abstract This paper briefly reviews the formulations used over the last 40 years for the solution of problems involving tensile cracking, with both the discrete and the smeared crack approaches. The paper focuses on the smeared approach, identifying as its main drawbacks the observed mesh-size and mesh-bias spurious dependence when the method is applied ,straightly'. A simple isotropic local damage constitutive model is considered, and the (exponential) softening modulus is regularized according to the material fracture energy and the element size. The continuum and discrete mechanical problems corresponding to both the weak discontinuity (smeared cracks) and the strong discontinuity (discrete cracks) approaches are analysed and the question of propagation of the strain localization band (crack) is identified as the main difficulty to be overcome in the numerical procedure. A tracking technique is used to ensure stability of the solution, attaining the necessary convergence properties of the corresponding discrete finite element formulation. Numerical examples show that the formulation derived is stable and remarkably robust. As a consequence, the results obtained do not suffer from spurious mesh-size or mesh-bias dependence, comparing very favourably with those obtained with other fracture and continuum mechanics approaches. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Computational mechanics of the steel,concrete interface,

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR NUMERICAL AND ANALYTICAL METHODS IN GEOMECHANICS, Issue 2 2002
M. R. Ben Romdhane
Abstract Concrete cracking in reinforced concrete structures is governed by two mechanisms: the activation of bond forces at the steel,concrete interface and the bridge effects of the reinforcement crossing a macro-crack. The computational modelling of these two mechanisms, acting at different scales, is the main objective of this paper. The starting point is the analysis of the micro-mechanisms, leading to an appropriate choice of (measurable) state variables describing the energy state in the surface systems: on the one side the relative displacement between the steel and the concrete, modelling the bond activation; on the other hand, the crack opening governing the bridge effects. These displacement jumps are implemented in the constitutive model using thermodynamics of surfaces of discontinuity. On the computational side, the constitutive model is implemented in a discrete crack approach. A truss element with slip degrees of freedom is developed. This degree of freedom represents the relative displacement due to bond activation. In turn, the bridge effect is numerically taken into account by modifying the post-cracking behaviour of the contact elements representing discrete concrete cracks crossed by a rebar. First simulation results obtained with this model show a good agreement in crack pattern and steel stress distribution with micro-mechanical results and experimental results. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]