A unified constitutive theory for brittle solids (Q1202615)

It will be shown in this paper that the description of damage and plasticity surfaces arises as a consequence of too strong a statement being made on the composition of the dissipation inequality and that so strong a statement is not necessary. In fact, it will be pointed out that, with a weaker statement based on physical evidence, the total energy dissipation can be described in terms of a single internal variable parameter and that this will lead to the description of material inelasticity via the development of a single flow surface.