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Title:
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COMPUTATIONAL ISSUES RELATED TO CONCRETE 
AND OTHER QUASI-BRITTLE MATERIALS
In honor of Prof. Kaspar J. Willam's 65th birthday

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Organizers:
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Howard L. Schreyer	
University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131 USA 
schreyer@unm.edu

Daniela Ciancio  and Ignacio Carol
Dept. of Mechanical Engineering	ETSECCPB (Civil Engineering)
UPC (Technical Univ. of Catalonia) 
E-08034 Barcelona, SPAIN
daniela.ciancio@upc.edu	
ignacio.carol@upc.edu

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Minisymposium description:
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Concrete is an important engineering material that is used widely in large structures 
that are subject to a variety of complex loads such as earthquakes, snow loads and air 
blasts.  Safety analyses require that mathematical models must simulate inelastic behavior 
that often combines elasticity, plasticity, continuum damage and material failure.  In 
general quasi-brittle materials such as ice and rock also exhibit similar features so 
contributions for one material are generally applicable to another.  Because of this 
complex behavior almost all investigations must, of necessity, involve numerical 
procedures and therefore fall under the broad category of computational mechanics.

As exhibited by his publications, Professor Willam has investigated practically all matters 
related to concrete behavior including nontraditional loads such as thermal and chemical 
effects.  In the spirit of his contributions, the purpose of this mini-symposium is to bring 
together researchers involved in a range of numerical issues related to modeling the behavior 
of quasi-brittle materials and simulating the response of structures made of such materials.  
As examples, contributions could be constitutive models for continuum behavior and material 
failure, the development of macro-constitutive equations from microstructural behavior, 
numerical algorithms for handling cracks and failure at interfaces, and the multi-scale 
problem.

The topic is to be considered broadly so that researchers are encouraged to submit potential 
contributions from any number of areas with a focus on quasi-brittle materials.  Topics of 
interest include but are not limited to the following:

 * Applications to large-scale structures with severe loads
 * Numerical issues related to the multi-scale problem
 * Coupling involving thermal, chemical, water infiltration and freezing
 * Early age and time-dependent behavior
 * Modeling concrete as a mixture
 * Discrete and nonlocal approaches to modeling quasi-brittle failure 
 * Multiple fracture surfaces; fragmentation
 * Accumulation of damage from repetitive loads
 * FE meshes for interfaces and crack development