Engineering Fracture Mechanics Guide for Authors Submit Your Paper Track Your Paper Order Journal Access Full Text Journal News Conferences ESIS News Special Issues Recent Articles Most Cited Articles Most Downloaded Articles ADVERTISEMENT Stay up-to-date Register your interests and receive email alerts tailored to your needs Click here to sign up 1 Most Cited Engineering Fracture Mechanics Articles Most cited articles published since 2007, extracted from SciVerse Scopus. An engineering solution for mesh size effects in the simulation of delamination using cohesive zone models Volume 74, Issue 10, July 2007, Pages 1665-1682 Turon, A. | Dávila, C.G. | Camanho, P.P. | Costa, J. A methodology to determine the constitutive parameters for the simulation of progressive delamination is proposed. The procedure accounts for the size of a cohesive finite element and the length of the cohesive zone to ensure the correct dissipation of energy. In addition, a closed-form expression for estimating the minimum penalty stiffness necessary for the constitutive equation of a cohesive finite element is presented. It is shown that the resulting constitutive law allows the use of coarser finite element meshes than is usually admissible, which renders the analysis of large-scale progressive delamination problems computationally tractable. © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Three-dimensional crack initiation, propagation, branching and junction in non-linear materials by an extended meshfree method without asymptotic enrichment Volume 75, Issue 5, March 2008, Pages 943-960 Bordas, S. | Rabczuk, T. | Zi, G. This paper presents a three-dimensional, extrinsically enriched meshfree method for initiation, branching, growth and coalescence of an arbitrary number of cracks in non-linear solids including large deformations, for statics and dynamics. The novelty of the methodology is that only an extrinsic discontinuous enrichment and no near-tip enrichment is required. Instead, a Lagrange multiplier field is added along the crack front to close the crack. This decreases the computational cost and removes difficulties involved with a branch enrichment. The results are compared to experimental data, and other simulations from the literature to show the robustness and accuracy of the method. © 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Structural damage diagnosis and life-time assessment by acoustic emission monitoring Volume 74, Issues 1-2, January 2007, Pages 273-289 Carpinteri, A. | Lacidogna, G. | Pugno, N. The acoustic emission technique is applied to identify defects and damage in reinforced concrete structures and masonry buildings. By means of this technique, a particular methodology has been put forward for crack propagation monitoring and damage assessment, in structural elements under service conditions. This technique permits to estimate the amount of energy released during fracture propagation and to obtain information on the criticality of the ongoing process. In addition, based on fracture mechanics concepts, a fractal or multiscale methodology is proposed to predict the damage evolution and the time to structural collapse. © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Representative volume: Existence and size determination Volume 74, Issue 16, November 2007, Pages 2518-2534 Gitman, I.M. | Askes, H. | Sluys, L.J. The concept of the representative volume element (RVE) is analysed in the present paper. For elastic materials the RVE exists and one can determine the size of the RVE. However, for other applications, such as the case of softening materials, the RVE may not exist. In the present work the RVE has been investigated for different stages of the material response, including pre- and post-peak loading regimes. Results were based on a statistical analysis of numerical experiments, where tests have been performed on a random heterogeneous material. © 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. A geometrically non-linear three-dimensional cohesive crack method for reinforced concrete structures Volume 75, Issue 16, November 2008, Pages 4740-4758 Rabczuk, T. | Zi, G. | Bordas, S. | Nguyen-Xuan, H. A three-dimensional meshfree method for modeling arbitrary crack initiation and crack growth in reinforced concrete structure is presented. This meshfree method is based on a partition of unity concept and formulated for geometrically non-linear problems. The crack kinematics are obtained by enriching the solution space in order to capture the correct crack kinematics. A cohesive zone model is used after crack initiation. The reinforcement modeled by truss or beam elements is connected by a bond model to the concrete. We applied the method to model the fracture of several reinforced concrete structures and compared the results to experimental data. © 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. High-speed photography of compressed human trabecular bone correlates whitening to microscopic damage Volume 74, Issue 12, August 2007, Pages 1928-1941 Thurner, P.J. | Erickson, B. | Jungmann, R. | Schriock, Z. | Weaver, J.C. | Fantner, G.E. | Schitter, G. | Morse, D.E. | Hansma, P.K. Mechanical testing of trabecular bone is mainly motivated by the huge impact of osteoporosis in post-menopausal women and the aged in society in terms of social and health care costs. Trabecular bone loss and impairment of its mechanical properties reduce bone strength and increase fracture risk, especially in vertebrae. It is generally accepted that in addition to bone mineral density, microarchitecture and material properties of bone also play important roles for bone strength and fracture risk. In order to overcome the limitations of standard mechanical tests delivering merely integral information about complicated samples, experiments were designed for step-wise mechanical testing with concurrent imaging of trabecular and cortical bone. In this communication we present an approach for real-time imaging of trabecular bone during compression using high-speed photography and investigate the hypothesis whether the whitening of deformed trabeculae is due to microdamage. Experiments on human trabecular bone samples from a healthy male donor revealed that failure of such samples is highly localized in fracture bands. Moreover, strongly deformed trabeculae were seen to whiten, an effect similar to stress whitening in Most Cited Engineering Fracture Mechanics Articles http://www.journals.elsevier.com/engineering-fracture-mechanics/most-... 1 of 5 24/01/2012 8:41