Localization of damage in a nonlocal continuum (Q1185381)

The paper addresses the issues of damage localization in nonlocal media. It is demonstrated that strain localization in which the strain rate field is discontinuous is not admissible when the constitutive equations are nonlocal. Thus damage localization in nonlocal media can be regarded as a possible loss of uniqueness of the continuous solutions and depart from the by-now standard analysis of discontinuous localization modes. One-dimensional and plane strain solutions to this bifurcation problem are derived.