New Tensors for Anisotropic Damage in Continuum Damage Mechanics

Abstract

In this work, new proposed damage tensors are studied in order to investigate the damage effect variables in the mechanical behavior of materials. All cases studied in this work are defined in terms of the elasticity of the material and based on the hypotheses of both elastic strain equivalence and elastic energy equivalence. Moreover, the new proposed damage tensors are anisotropically expressed in terms of the well-known damage effect tensor M. The principal-valued damage effect tensor is used to obtain the first scalar invariant of that tensor and its inverse, which are employed in expressing and verifying the new proposed damage tensors. The study demonstrates that most of the new proposed damage tensors are verified within the framework of continuum damage mechanics. In addition, new hybrid damage tensors are proposed which are defined in terms of the damage effect tensor and the new proposed damage tensors. The new hybrid damage tensors are eventually expressed in terms of the damage effect tensor.