A robust method for the simulation of quasi-brittle materials Available to Purchase

In this paper, the authors describe a number of new acceleration techniques to improve the convergence properties of the recently developed smooth unloading–reloading (SUR) method for the finite-element simulation of quasi-brittle materials. The proposed techniques involve predicting or approximating a damage evolution parameter to simplify the implementation of the SUR algorithm and improve its efficiency in terms of solution time. The latter improvement is illustrated using a series of idealised examples of plain and reinforced concrete sections. The paper also describes a convenient procedure for computing the characteristic length parameter for a range of two-dimensional and three-dimensional finite elements.