Failure criteria of anisotropically damaged materials based on the critical plane concept

Abstract The damage state of a cracked material is assumed to be specified by crack density distribution on physical planes. The critical plane approach is used with account for damaged and intact area fractions on the plane. The maximum of failure function is specified for all potential failure planes and the critical plane orientation is determined. The resulting failure condition is applied to study strength evolution for triaxially compressed specimens with varying orientation of principal stress and damage tensor axes. Both Coulomb and non‐linear failure conditions of Mohr type are applied to specify the representative critical plane. A general stress state is considered and the failure condition is specified for different relative orientations of orthotropy and principal stress axes. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.