Fracture and damage in quasi-brittle materials: a comparison of approaches

A overview is given of different approaches to simulate and predict crack propagation in quasi-brittle materials, pointing out their merits, disadvantages and complementarity. Discrete crack approaches, smeared crack approaches and Molecular Dynamics are considered from a historical perspective, and it is discussed in which circumstances they are best used. For the various versions of the discrete and smeared approaches it is shown how the methods within each class have evolved, or why new methods have developed due to shortcomings of earlier versions.