A Case Study on Mode I Fracture Modeling of Concrete

This paper concerns the simulation of Mode I fracture with a local concrete damage model in explicit finite element code LSDYNA. A reliable modeling of fracture is essential in the analysis of tension-dominated problems, as well as the prediction of concrete damage due to cracking. A special focus of this paper is placed on an effective representation of the tensile localization in finite element modeling while generalized macro material properties are employed to modeling meso-scale problems. An investigation into the use of a typical damage plasticity concrete model within LSDYNA Explicit, based on the crack band theory, is described in detail. The main focus of the current paper is on the tensile softening branch.