Doubly periodic arrays of bridged cracks and short fibre-reinforced cementitious composites

This paper presents a superposition approach for studying the influence of bridging forces upon the opening of multiple cracks in elastic solids under unidirectional tensile loading. The bridging forces may be purely elastic and proportional to the crack-opening displacements, but an elasto-plastic bridging law is more likely to represent reality in a short fibre-reinforced solid. The fibres debond from the elastic matrix at a certain critical...