A Coupled Damage-Plasticity Constitutive Framework for Modelling Deformation of Quasi-Brittle Materials Using Bond-Based Peridynamics

  • Akram, Muhammad Naveed (Adelaide University)
  • Nguyen, Giang D (Adelaide University)
  • Sheikh, Abdul H (Adelaide University)
  • Karakus, Murat (Adelaide University)
  • Bui, Ha H (Monash University)

Please login to view abstract download link

Quasi-brittle materials exhibit strong nonlinear and path-dependent behavior caused by the mutually coupled mechanisms of distributed micro-cracking and crack-face frictional sliding, even under pure tension. Micro-cracking and frictional sliding lead to stiffness degradation and residual deformation observed at macro scale and frictional sliding dominates and contributes to a major portion of the energy dissipation during fracture, as experimentally observed by Ba{\v{z}}ant \cite{Bazant1996}, and Landis \textit{et al.} \cite{Landis2003Microstructure}. However, such observations have not always been reflected in numerical modelling, and existing bond-based peridynamics constitutive models are usually unable to represent these phenomena in an energetically consistent and unified manner. To address this gap, we present a thermodynamically consistent coupled damage-plasticity constitutive framework to capture stiffness degradation and residual deformation in quasi-brittle materials. In this novel framework, a single parameter controls the total energy dissipation associated with cracking and frictional sliding. This enables the model to capture a wide spectrum of material responses, from damage-dominated to plasticity-dominated, without altering the underlying complex model formulation. The proposed model is validated against experimental data through benchmark problems involving monotonic and cyclic uniaxial tension and mixed-mode loading. The numerical responses show good agreement with experimental observations, demonstrating good predictions of peak load, post-peak nonlinear decay, residual deformation, stiffness degradation, and crack patterns.