A general tangent operator applied to concrete using a multi-surface plasticity model

The present paper aims at developing a method to accommodate multi-surface concrete plasticity from the point of view of a consistency concept applied to general tangent operators. The idea is based on a Taylor series expansion of the actual effective stress at the stress point corresponding to the previous accumulated true stresses plus the current increment values, initially taken to be elastic. The proposed algorithm can be generalized for any multi-surface criteria combination and has been tested here for typical cement-based materials. A few examples of application are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the multi-surface technique as used to a combination of Rankine and Drucker-Prager yield criteria.