In materials science, material failure is the loss of load carrying capacity of a material unit. This definition introduces to the fact that material failure can be examined in different scales, from microscopic, to macroscopic. In structural problems, where the structural response may be beyond the initiation of nonlinear material behaviour, material failure is of profound importance for the determination of the integrity of the structure. On the other hand, due to the lack of globally accepted fracture criteria, the determination of the structure's damage, due to material failure, is still under intensive research.