Extraction of a crack opening from a continuous approach using regularized damage models

Crack opening governs many transfer properties that play a pivotal role in durability analyses. Instead of trying to combine continuum and discrete models in computational analyses, it would be attractive to derive from the continuum approach an estimate of crack opening, without considering the explicit description of a discontinuous displacement field in the computational model. This is the prime objective of this contribution. The derivation is based on the comparison between two continuous variables: the distribution if the effective non local strain that controls damage and an analytical distribution of the effective non local variable that derives from a strong discontinuity analysis. Close to complete failure, these distributions should be very close to each other. Their comparison provides two quantities: the displacement jump across the crack [U] and the distance between the two profiles. This distance is an error indicator defining how close the damage distribution is from that corresponding to a crack surrounded by a fracture process zone. It may subsequently serve in continuous/discrete models in order to define the threshold below which the continuum approach is close enough to the discrete one in order to switch descriptions. The estimation of the crack opening is illustrated on a one-dimensional example and the error between the profiles issued from discontinuous and FE analyses is found to be of a few percents close to complete failure.