Font Size: 

The paper presents a nouvelle nonlocal damage formulation able to reproduce the typical continuum localized failure modes of quasibrittle materials. The only two variables treated as nonlocal in the formulations are the continuum damage and the energy release rate. The ßrst is related to the actual material stiÞness degradation,
whereas the second enters as a driving force in the damage activation function. The model is derived in such a way to naturally comply with thermodynamic principles and the hypothesis of associative damage àow rule is assumed. The nonlocal damage model has been implemented in a ßnite element program and some numerical simulations up to the complete failure of plane concrete specimens have been performed. The numerical analyses have been conducted under the hypothesis of plane stress conditions and the results match with experimental data and are fully mesh objective