A two-scale approach with homogenization for the computation of cracked structures

In this paper, some aspects of a multiscale strategy for the analysis of cracked structures are presented. The purposes of this strategy are, first, to separate the local effects from the global effects in order to keep a macromesh unchanged during the crack's propagation and, second, to enable one to use a proper fine-scale description only where it is required. Here, the propagation aspect is not addressed. We focus on the crack modeling. Two main aspects are discussed: the first is the choice of the macroscale and its associated discretization in order to include the macroeffect of a crack; the second is the use of a decomposition of the domain into substructures and interfaces in order to limit the use of the refined scale only to where it is required. (c) 2006 Civil-Comp Ltd. and Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.