Zhenjun Yang graduated with a BEng in civil engineering from Zhejiang University and a PhD in structural engineering from Wolverhampton University, UK in 1996 and 2002 respectively. Before joining the University of Liverpool as a Lecturer in Civil Engineering in 2006, he undertook research and teaching in Queen's University Belfast, Zhejiang University and the University of Western Australia. He also held short visiting appointments in Edinburgh University, UK and Stevens Institute of Technology, USA. His research interests include numerical modelling techniques (FEM and SBFEM), concrete fracture mechanics, analysis and design of reinforced concrete structures, and FRP strengthening techniques of concrete structures. His research has been supported by EPSRC UK, European Regional Development Fund, Australian Research Council, National Natural Science Foundation of China etc. for about 10 projects with total funding exceeding £800,000, for half of which he is the Principal Investigator. Since 2001, he has published 25 refereed international journal papers (most SCI indexed and cited by others for over 100 times) and a similar number of conference papers. He is the recipient of a 2004 PE Publishing Award from IMechE, UK. At present, his research team comprises a postdoctoral researcher, two PhD students and two visiting researchers.

Due to low concrete tensile strength, crack initiation and propagation is inherent to concrete structures and is a major contributor to material nonlinearity and culprit to structural failure. Computer modelling of crack propagation plays an important role in assessing structural resistance to fracture and residual load-carrying capacity. This talk will review numerical crack models available with a focus on the presenter’s recent research on discrete cohesive crack models, implemented by both remeshing procedures in in-house programs and pre-embedding methods in the commercial package Abaqus. Numerical simulations of various 2D and 3D concrete structures with single/multi-crack propagation under static and dynamic loadings will be presented, using both the traditional finite element method (FEM) and the newly-developed scaled boundary finite element method (SBFEM). The current effort on developing fracture models considering random heterogeneous material properties in order to assess structural reliability will also be discussed.