Degradation instabilities in brittle material structures (Q751900)

The authors first review the experimental and the theoretical information on degradation mechanisms of brittle material structures. It is concluded that although a considerable amount of research on the subject of damage and, to a much less extent, on surface degradation has been performed in recent years, the related stability problems have not been studied adequately. Damage and surface degradation are closely related to the well known size and shape effects of brittle materials. It is shown that surface degradation is important for both size and shape dependent properties of such materials. The theoretical developments are compared to the observed behaviour of an artificial rock.