The paper presents the development of the GPU-based discrete element method (DEM) code for simulating damage and fracture of cohesive solids with application to reinforced concrete at the scale of reinforcement ribs. The solid volume of concrete and steel is modelled by bonded spherical particles. Very fine discretization, containing more than million particles, is applied to describe the 3D reinforcement bar geometry at the scale of ribs and to investigate cracking behaviour of concrete near...

This issue of “Archives of Mechanics” contains a selection of papers presented at the 41st Solid Mechanics Conference (SolMech 2018) held in Warsaw, August 27–31, 2018. The e-book of conference abstracts (with the ISBN) is available at the conference website: http://solmech2018.ippt.pan.pl/.

We investigate the problem of determining the reach of an inclined cantilever for a given point load suspended from its tip. Two situations are considered. Firstly, we find the maximum reach of the cantilever by varying its angle of inclination. Secondly, we find the reach of the cantilever subject to the condition that its tip is at some specified height, above or below, the level of the clamped end. In the second case, the reach...