Application of continuum laws in discontinuity analysis based on a regularised displacement discontinuity

Abstract

The application of continuum constitutive laws in embedded strong discontinuity analysis is examined. By adopting a regularised discontinuity (approximating the unbounded strain field resulting from a displacement jump with a bounded function), the strain field in a body is always bounded, hence continuum laws can be applied. However, this must be done with some caution since the ‘fictitious’ strain state at the discontinuity can lead to spurious behaviour that does not arise in the conventional application of classical constitutive laws. Particularly addressed is stress locking as a function of the displacement regularisation in some plasticity models. It is also shown that the regularisation function can have a serious impact on convergence behaviour for some types of constitutive models.