Nonlinear Crack Models for Nonmetallic Materials

This volume surveys the most relevant nonlinear crack models, with the purpose of analyzing the nonlinear mechanical effects occurring at the tip of macrocracks in quasi-brittle materials, such as concrete, rocks, ceramics, polymers, high-strength metallic alloys. Such local effects as, for example, plastic deformation, yielding, strain-hardening, strain-softening, mechanical damage, matrix microcracking, aggregate debonding, fibre bridging, fibre slippage, crazing, and so on, are properly described through different simplified models, representing the peculiarities of the phenomena involved. The models are introduced and described separately and then compared in the last part of the book.