An Overview of Applications of Kafka’s General Mesomechanical Concept to Inelastic Deformation, Cumulative Damage, and Fracture

Abstract

The previously published applications of the first author’s general mesomechanical concept are surveyed to show a logical integration of the newly presented application to fracture into the general image. The newly presented application models fracture of bodies with cracks. This way of presentation emphasizes that the respective model is not any ad hoc chosen formula, but that it is incorporated in a widely applicable general scheme. In the current study, attention is paid to classical technical materials. The original area of the use of our general model was plasticity, where a number of quantitative comparisons with experimental data corroborated the merits of this approach. The next step was application to cumulative damage and fracture without pre-existing initiators of the fracturing process. The last step, newly discussed in this study, is mesomechanical modeling of the progress of cracks, described by local effect of the deviatoric part of the stress tensor and by a nonlocal effect of the isotropic part of the stress tensor.