9. Elastic-Brittle Damage

Besides ductile materials considered hitherto, a variety of brittle materials, like concrete, rocks and ceramics, are widely employed in engineering practice. Their mechanical behavior can not be described by the elastic-plastic damage theory or by the viscoplastic damage theory discussed already. The present chapter is concerned with the damage and the deformation behavior of elastic-brittle materials, and the related continuum damage mechanics theory to describe them. In Section 9.1, to begin with, the microscopic mechanisms of damage and the ensuing mechanical behavior of microcracks in concrete will be discussed. Application of the simplest theory of isotropic damage to the damage process of concrete with unilateral crack effect is descried in Section 9.2.