ABSTRACT
Fracture of concrete is always accompanied by some internal microcracking. Neglecting this kind of material degradation is the main reason of the so called structural effect phenomena observed in experiments where linear elastic behaviour is assumed. In the continuum damage model that we propose, the isotropic damage (scalar) is a function of a nonlocal variable. As it is well known, microcracking in concrete is very sensitive to material heterogeneity, and we have to study it on a scale (mesoscale) different from that in which the medium is homogeneous (macroscale).The use of the present model for numerical computations assures mesh-independence and objectivity of the solution with regard to the finite element discretization. At the same time, the model is capable of describing the structural effects in the case of localized failure modes.
