ABSTRACT
After more than ten years of extensive—and intensive—research efforts world-wide investigating methods of fracture mechanics to explain localization, crack growth and fracture in plain and reinforced concrete structures, it is time to organize this material and present to the design engineering community practical approaches to its implementation. In this chapter an approach is presented, based on expert system concepts, for developing software which may be implemented on a personal computer. The domain areas include: tutorial, teaching aid, materials testing, and reinforced concrete design. One aspect of the expert knowledge used is the selectivity of the recommended procedures. This is a personal (expert) judgement which is necessary to provide reasonable limits to the scope of the program.
