A COMPARATIVE STUDY FOR CONCRETE FRACTURE ANALYSIS USING SMEARED-AND DISCRETE-CRACK MODEL

Crack propagation is one of the key issues for simulating nonlinear behavior and evaluating safety of concrete structures. The equivalent crack opening displacement of smeared damage-fracture model is formulated with damage parameter and crack band width. Mode I and mixed-mode fracture tests of concrete beams are analyzed using smeared and discrete crack models. The numerical results of smeared crack model, including load-carrying capacity, crack propagating depth and equivalent crack opening displacement, are consistent with those obtained using the discrete one. The comparative study shows that these two models have almost identical accuracy in evaluating both macro-scale and meso-scale structural information, but the smeared crack model has higher computation efficiency than the discrete one.