We would like to congratulate our employee Fábio Luis Gea dos Santos for the conclusion of his masters in civil engineering at UNICAMP graduation program. The dissertation theme involved: “Study and automation of the loading rate influence in response on quasi-brittle fracture”, where it was partially presented in Pirenópolis GO at CILAMCE conference and soon its continuation will be presented at Fortaleza CE (XXXV Ibero-Latin American Congress on Computational Methods in Engineering).
The study was based in visco-cohesive models evaluation for fracture propagation in quasi-brittle materials (such as concrete and rocks). Using an inverse analysis tool developed in C++ language and flexion tests on three points at different loading rates, it was observed that the existing literature models are insufficient to represent the process. Fábio will continue the research in his PhD studies developing a visco-cohesive model adequate to fracture propagation in concrete.