The paper deals with the numerical simulation of a confined fracture test in concrete. The test is part of the experimental work carried out at ETSECCPB-UPC in order to elucidate the existence of a second mode of fracture under shear and high compression, and evaluate the associated fracture energy. The specimen is a short cylinder with also cylindrical coaxial notches similar the one proposed by Luong (1990), which is introduced in a largecapacity triaxial cell, protected with membranes and subject to different levels of confining pressure prior to vertical loading. In the experiments, the main crack follows the preestablished cylindrical notch path, which is in itself a significant achievement. The loaddisplacement curves for various confining pressures also seem to follow the expected trend according to the underlying conceptual model. The FE model developed includes zerothickness interface elements with fracture-based constitutive laws, which are pre-inserted along the cylindrical ligament and the potential radial crack plane. The results reproduce reasonably well the overall force-displacement curves of the test for various confinement levels, and make it possible to identify the fracture parameters including the fracture energies in modes I and IIa.
