Theoretical and computational issues in modelling material failure in strong discontinuity scenarios

The paper deals with several aspects related to numerical modelling of material failure in strong discontinuity settings: (a) the onset and development of local material failure in terms of continuum constitutive models equipped with strain softening. Closed forms formulas for the solutions of the discontinuous material bifurcation problem are given for a class of those models; (b) finite elements with embedded discontinuities: nodal and elemental enrichments families are formulated in the continuum strong discontinuity approach (CSDA); (c) instability treatment: a discrete viscous perturbation method at the failure surfaces is presented as a way to substantially improve the robustness of the numerical simulations. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.