The use of displacement discontinuities in a rate-dependent medium

This paper illustrates the use of displacement discontinuities in a rate-dependent elastoplastic-damage model. Rate-dependency is considered in the framework of Perzyna viscoplasticity. Displacement discontinuities are incorporated using the partition of unity property of finite-element shape functions. A combined continuous–discontinuous approach is proposed in which a discontinuity is only inserted after a certain amount of damage. Various examples illustrate the applicability of the combined approach to granular and quasi-brittle materials with and without fibre-reinforcement.