A composite crack model for concrete based on meshless method

A crack model for the fracture in concrete based on meshless method is proposed in this paper. The cracks in concrete are classified into micro-cracks or macro-cracks respectively according to their widths, and different numerical approaches are adopted for them. The micro-cracks are represented with smeared crack approach whilst the macro-cracks are represented with discrete cracks that are made up with additional nodes and boundaries. The widely used meshless method, Element-free Galerkin method, is adopted instead of finite element method to model the concrete, so that the discrete crack approach is easier to be implemented with the convenience of arranging node distribution in the meshless method. Rotating-Crack-Model is proved to be preferred over Fixed-Crack-Model for the smeared cracks of this composite crack model due to its better performance on mesh bias. Numerical examples show that this composite crack model can take advantage of the positive characteristics in the smeared and discrete approaches, and overcome some of their disadvantages.