Crack modelling of concrete, rock and soil with inner softening bands

To model the cracking behaviour of brittle materials, different existing methods for treating the fracture zone can be used. The inner softening band (ISB) approach belongs to those methods which introduce a displacement discontinuity in which a constitutive relationship between opening displacements and tractions is assumed. This group of methods avoids difficulties in the localization zone caused by ambiguous definitions of strain measures and fracture zone widths. Whichever method is used, it is important that the proper amount of energy is dissipated. This is achieved automatically in ISB without the introduction of any extra material parameters other than the elastic constants and those describing the softening curve. Variations in mesh sizes and arrangements have shown no great influence on the total response, and the crack pattern is a part of the solution in contrast to most other methods in which it must be presumed. The concept is simple and inner softening bands have been successfully implemented within triangular three-node elements and preliminary within six-node triangular elements. The results obtained so far from various kinds of tests have shown very good performance and further development is planned.