Gradient enhanced damage: modelling, implementation and applications

Finite element (FE) simulations with constitutive models for softening materials, such as in the case of standard continuum damage mechanics based approaches, suffer from pathological mesh sensitivity as a result of strain localisation into a single element row. To overcome this major drawback, the local damage has to be enhanced towards nonlocal damage evolution. A suitable method for this purpose is the integral nonlocal formulation, available in LS-DYNA® by the keyword *MAT_NONLOCAL. However, its costly underlying search algorithm can result in a strong increase of the simulation time, leading to an impractical application for engineering problems.