Fundamental aspects of brittle cooperative phenomena - Effective continua models

The present paper focuses on the study of some of the fundamental aspects of the cooperative brittle phenomena and damage growth. This rather complex problem is studied on a simple discretized artifice known as the parallel bar model. The disorder in microstructure is introduced by a statistical description of the distribution of the link rupture strengths. The criteria of the damage growth are derived from the thermodynamic analysis of the rupturing process. Stability analysis of the damage growth is also presented. The paper discusses different damage measures and corresponding conjugate affinities.