Engineering Fracture Mechanics 69 (2002) 137163

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The cohesive zone model: advantages, limitations

and challenges
M. Elices *, G.V. Guinea, J. G
omez, J. Planas
Universidad Politechnica de Madrid, E.T.S.I. Caminos, Ciudad Universitaria, Professor Aranguren s/n, 28040 Madrid, Spain

Abstract
This paper reviews the cohesive process zone model, a general model which can deal with the nonlinear zone ahead of
the crack tipdue to plasticity or microcrackingpresent in many materials. Furthermore, the cohesive zone model is
able to adequately predict the behaviour of uncracked structures, including those with blunt notches, and not only the
response of bodies with cracksa usual drawback of most fracture models. The cohesive zone model, originally applied
to concrete and cementitious composites, can be used with success for other materials. More powerful computer
programs and better knowledge of material properties may widen its potential eld of application. In this paper, the
cohesive zone model is shown to provide good predictions for concrete and for dierent notched samples of a glassy
polymer (PMMA) and some steels. The paper is structured in two main sections: First, the cohesive model is reviewed
and emphasis is on determination of the softening function, an essential ingredient of the cohesive model, by inverse
analysis procedures. The second section is devoted to some examples of the predictive capability of the cohesive zone
model when applied to dierent materials; concrete, PMMA and steel. 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Cohesive process zone; Concrete; Crack

1. Introduction
Linear elastic fracture mechanics (LEFM) has proven a useful tool for solving fracture problems provided a crack-like notch or aw exists in the body and the nonlinear zone ahead of the crack tip is negligible. This is not always the case, and for ductile metals or for cementitious materials, among others, the
size of the nonlinear zonedue to plasticity or microcrackingis not negligible in comparison with other
dimensions of the cracked geometry. Moreover, even for brittle materials, where the process zone can be
lumped into a single point, the presence of an initial crack is needed for LEFM to be applicable. This means
that bodies with blunt notchesbut no crackscannot be analysed using LEFM.
Both shortcomings are present in concrete; for ordinary concrete, the nonlinear zone, most of which
coincides with the fracture process zone, can be measured in tenths of a metre and, very often, stress
concentrators acting as notches can be found in structural elements. The cohesive zone model, pioneered

Corresponding author. Tel.: +34-915-433-974; fax: +34-915-437-845.

E-mail address: melices@mater.upm.es (M. Elices).

0013-7944/02/$ - see front matter 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
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where e is the average strain in the cell (in direction normal to the crack plane). This obviously shows that
Broberg's cell approach and Bazant's crack band approach are equivalent when the cells indeed form a
band along the crack path (Fig. 1b). However, there are subtle dierences with respect to its use in computations. The rst dierence is that the cell size is xed while in the crack band the nite element size can
be modied consistently. The second dierence is that in the band approach, all the elements in the model
reproduce the same stressstrain behaviour for the ascending part of the re curve (the hardening branch).
For the cell approach, the behaviour of the material outside the process zone is that of a continuum, but its
constitutive equation is not related to the behaviour of that of the cell, except for its initial slope (elastic
response is the same for the cells and for the remaining part of the body).
The cohesive crack process zone (CCPZ) model can be considered as a limit of the cell model in which
the cells become at and, in the limit, they have zero width (Fig. 1c). The behaviour of the cell is equivalent,
then, to an interface element in nite element methods. The behaviour of the cohesive crack is dened by
the relationship between the cohesive stress and the relative displacement w between the upper and lower
face of the cell (the cohesive crack width or opening):
r f w

This equation (as well as the previous equations) is strictly valid for monotonic crack opening only (or
monotonic cell or band stretch). In this case, one could ask in which cases the cell or band model and the
cohesive crack model are equivalent. This is developed at length in Ref. [3, Chapter 8] . The key point is that
since the ``cell'' width is zero for the cohesive crack, the corresponding elastic displacement is also zero, as
well as all the distributed displacements or strains. This implies that the cohesive crack curve (3) contains
information only on the descending part of the loaddisplacement curve (the softening branch, called by
Broberg the decohesion relation). This implies that the hardening branch in the cell or band approach must
be incorporated into the behaviour of the continuum outside the cohesive zone (which we call the bulk from
now on).
The correspondence between the stressstrain curves of the band (or the stressdisplacement curves of
the cell) and the stresscrack opening curves of the cohesive zone are illustrated in Fig. 2. For the case (very
common in concrete and other quasibrittle materials) in which the hardening part is linear (which we call
elastic-softening behaviour), the correspondence is simple: the bulk behaviour is linear elastic until the
stress reaches the tensile strength ft , and then softens (Fig. 2a and b). Then, given the band or cell width,
there is a one to one correspondence between the fracturing strain ef e r=E and the cohesive crack
opening, namely ef h w. Therefore, the equation of the softening branch in the band model (as a function
of the fracturing strain) reads
r f ef h /s ef

The case in which there is a noticeable nonlinearity of the hardening branch in the band formulation is
considerably more complex (Fig. 2c and d). As described in Ref. [3] this hardening nonlinearity must be
taken up by the bulk and described through a classical stressstrain approach (Fig. 2d). The description of
the softening branch is then given by an equation identical to Eq. (3), except that in this case the fracturing
strain is measured from the curve corresponding to unloading from the origin, i.e.:
ef e

eu r

where eu r is the strain of an element unloading from the peak point at the stress level considered.
As long as the band and cohesive crack models are linked by the foregoing relations, the resulting behaviour (as predicted, e.g., by numerical computations) is nearly the same, at least when the width h of the
softening band or cell is much smaller than the dimensions of the body whose fracture is analysed.
The fact that a cohesive zone in a homogeneous body cannot have a hardening branch is sometimes
overlooked. If we assume a hardening branch followed by a softening branch, as in Fig. 3, and the body is