Abstract
Ket qualitative features of solutions exhibiting strong discontinuities in rate-independent inelastic solids are identified and exploited in the design of a new class of finite element approximations. The analysis shows that the softening law must be re-interpreted in a distributional sense for the continuum solutions to make mathematical sense and provides a precise physical interpretation to the softening modulus. These results are verified by numerical simulations employing a regularized discontinuous finite element method which circumvent the strong mesh-dependence exhibited by conventional methods, without resorting to viscosity or introducing additional ad-hoc parameters. The analysis is extended to a new class of anisotropic rate-independent damage models for brittle materials.
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Communicated by S. N. Atluri, November 29, 1992
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Simo, J.C., Oliver, J. & Armero, F. An analysis of strong discontinuities induced by strain-softening in rate-independent inelastic solids. Computational Mechanics 12, 277–296 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00372173
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00372173