DAMAGE TENSORS AND THE CRACK DENSITY DISTRIBUTION

The paper presents an algorithm for the derivation of damage tensors emphasizing its relationship with the actual and approximate crack density distributions. The proposed model is illustrated using scalar, second and fourth order continuous tensor approximations of some typical two and three dimensional crack distributions. It is also shown that the occurrence of regions with negative crack density (anticrack regions) is in many cases a common and as yet unexplored feature of the approximate solutions.