Locality constraints within multiscale model for non‐linear material behaviour

This paper presents a two-scale approach for the mechanical and numerical modelling of materials with microstructure-like concrete or fibre-reinforced concrete in the non-linear regime. It addresses applications, where the assumption of scale separation as the basis for classical homogenization methods does not hold. This occurs when the resolution of micro and macro scale does not differ ab initio or when evolving fluctuations in the macro-fields are in the order of the micro scale during the loading progress. Typical examples are localization phenomena. The objective of the present study is to develop an efficient solution method exploiting the physically existing multiscale character of the problem. The proposed method belongs to the superposition-based methods with local enrichment of the large-scale solution ū by a small-scale part u′. The main focus of the present formulation is to allow for locality of the small-scale solution within the large-scale elements to achieve an efficient solution strategy. At the same time the small-scale information exchange over the large-scale element boundaries is facilitated while maintaining the accuracy of a refined complete solution. Thus, the emphasis lies on finding appropriate locality constraints for u′. To illustrate the method the formulation is applied to a damage mechanics based material model for concrete-like materials. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.