An Enriched Constitutive Model for Fracture Propagation Analysis using the Material Point Method

Abstract: We develop a novel constitutive modeling approach for the analysis of fracture propagation in quasi-brittle materials using the Material Point Method. The kinematics of constitutive models is enriched with an additional mode of localized deformation to take into account the strain discontinuity once cracking has occurred. The crack details therefore can be stored at material point level and there is no need to enrich the kinematics of finite elements to capture the localization caused by fracturing processes. This enhancement also removes the drawback of classical smeared crack approach in producing unphysical snapping back constitutive responses when the spatial resolution is not fine enough. All these facilitate the implementation of the new approach in the Material Point Method for analysis of large scale problems. Numerical examples of fracture propagation are used to demonstrate the effectiveness and potentials of the new approach.