Reliability of fracturing concrete structures and challenges of stochastic finite element modeling

During the last two decades, researches on quasibrittlc failure have led to major advances in the understanding and modeling of the energetic and statistical size effects in the mean statistical sense •2• Computational approaches and simple design code formulas giving better mean predictions have becn developed. It now appears, however, that the existing design codes• and standard practice for concrete and other quasibrittle structures also necessitate major revisions with regard to the effect of structure size and, more generally, degrec of brittleness, which depend not only on the size of the structure but also on its structure geometry.