Elastic damage models or elastic plastic constitutive laws are not totally sufficient to describe the behavior of concrete. They indeed fail to reproduce the unloading slopes during cyclic loads which define experimentally the value of the damage in the material.…
Elastic damage models or elastic plastic constitutive laws are not totally sufficient to describe the behavior of concrete. They indeed fail to reproduce the unloading slopes during cyclic loads which define experimentally the value of the damage in the material. When coupled effects are considered in particular in hydromechanical problems, the capability of the numerical model to reproduce the unloading behavior is essential, as an accurate value of the damage is needed. An elastic plastic damage formulation is so proposed and applied to three types of loading : simple tension, cyclic compression and triaxial tests with confinement pressures. It is shown how the plastic part of the model is responsible for the irreversible strains while the damage part simulates the softening behavior.