Damage localization, fracture and size-effect in composites
Co-Chairs:
Gianluca Cusatis, Northwestern University
Marco Salviato, University of Washington
Summary:
The design of several modern structures and advanced mechanical components leverages the use of media featuring complex, heterogenous meso – and micro-structures composed of brittle phases. This class of materials, typically referred to as quasibrittle, include unidirectional and textile composites with polymeric or ceramic matrices, concrete, biomaterials, nanocomposites, wood, rocks and toughened hydrogels just to mention a few. Understanding the deformation, damage and failure mechanisms and the related size effects is of utmost importance for the damage tolerant design of quasibrittle mechanical and aeronautical components and the improvement of the resilience and sustainability of the current and future civil infrastructures. This symposium aims at providing a forum for researchers to discuss the recent advances in the computational modeling and experimental characterization of damage and fracture in brittle and quasibrittle media. Particular focus is devoted to approaches that combine multiscale modeling with experimental characterization and validation across different length and time scales. Research areas of particular interest for the symposium include stochastic modeling of damage and fracture, multiscale computational modeling of softening damage, lattice and discrete computational models for quasibrittle media, nonlocal and gradient models, advanced multiscale and multiphysics models and novel experimental approaches for the characterization of the fracturing behavior of quasibrittle materials and the calibration and validation of multiscale computational models.