Modeling of Cohesive Cracks in the Element-Free Galerkin Method

Abstract

This study presents modeling of cohesive cracks in the Element-Free Galerkin (EFG) method. A cohesive crack is represented by several end-connected straight-line interface elements on which a constitutive law of cohesive cracks is directly applied. The stiffness equation is straightforwardly derived by including a term related to the energy dissipation along the interface elements in the weak form of the system equation. Using the interface elements in the EFG method allows cracks to propagate virtually without any constraint on their directions. Numerical results obtained from the proposed method for some benchmark tests of plain concrete beams are presented and compared with existing numerical and experimental results.