Abstract
This paper presents a spring-based cohesive crack model and its explicit solution method for the analysis of crack propagations in quasi-brittle materials. In the present method, the cohesive property between cracked surfaces is approximated as a kind of cohesive spring based on the penalty method instead of the traction force in conventional methods. We show the formulation of the spring-based cohesive crack model and detail the explicit solution algorithms for discrete crack propagation analyses in both the small strain and the finite strain problems. After demonstrating the capabilities of proposed method, we examine the mesh-size dependency in crack propagation analysis and study the performance of size effect of quasi-brittle structures in finite deformation problems. Finally, we demonstrate that the proposed method is stable and applicable even if a lot of cohesive cracks are included within the framework of multi-scale analysis based on the homogenization method under periodic boundary conditions which possibly causes the rigid-body motion.
