There is no official name proposed by the authors. The name K4 comes from the fact that the four authors' last names all start with the letter K.
The model implements the proposed hardening laws and crack closing mechanism. But the damage evolution is different from the original formulation. In specific, the original linear damage evolution is replaced by an exponential law that would alleviate potential numerical issues, as the numerical world does not like exact zeros.
The tensile strength ft is controlled by (6). The hardening modulus ht is computed as (4) times elastic modulus.
The crush strength fc(7) can be expressed as fc=fy+hck0 where fy is (9) times fc. k0 is strain when crush strength is reached, this is controlled by (8). The hardening modulus hc is automatically computed. The hardening modulus hd is computed as (5) times elastic modulus.
Damage
dt=1−exp(−er,tkt),dc=1−exp(−er,ckc).
The reference strain er,t and er,c are used to control the damage evolution. They can be expressed as
er,t=ζtEft,er,c=ζcEfc,
in which ζt and ζc are (10) and (11) respectively.
Examples
Effect of Crack Closing Stiffness Ratio
The crack closing stiffness ratio (3) controls the slope of the segment where crack opening is gradually closed.