A discrete anisotropic damage constitutive law with an enhanced mixed-mode kinematics: Application to RC shear walls

Abstract

The concept of displacement discontinuities embedded into standard finite elements allows efficient modeling of regions exhibiting localized strains, e.g. fracture of quasi-brittle materials. The present paper addresses the issue of fine cracking representation and the formulation of an enhanced anisotropic model to capture anisotropic cracking failure of reinforced concrete specimens. A damage-based constitutive law accounting, in a natural manner, for particular crack families orientation is used. This latter is enhanced with a mixed-mode strong discontinuity kinematics providing a discrete model expressed in terms of the displacement jump. The formulation and the finite element implementation are described. A shear wall under cyclic loading is studied. The results obtained are compared to the experimental ones. It is shown that the proposed model succeeds in reproducing accurately the anisotropic cracking and the unilateral effect.