  In this contribution, the use of discrete simulations to formulate an
anisotropic damage model is investigated. It is proposed to use a beam-particle
model to perform numerical characterization tests. Indeed, this discrete model
explicitly describes cracking by allowing displacement discontinuities and thus
capture crack induced anisotropy. Through 2D discrete simulations, the
evolution of the effective elasticity tensor for various loading tests, up to
failure, is obtained. The analysis of these tensors through bi-dimensional
harmonic decomposition is then performed to estimate the tensorial damage
evolution. As a by-product of present work we obtain an upper bound of the
distance to the orthotropic symmetry class of bi-dimensional elasticity.
