3D meso-mechanical modeling of concrete spall tests

Abstract

Numerical simulation of concrete spall tests is carried out in this paper by means of a 3D meso-mechanical model. The model is developed by assuming that concrete can be considered as a three-phase material containing cement mortar, aggregates and interfacial transition zone (ITZ) and the difficulty of simulating the very thin ITZ layer is overcome by employing element reconstruction technique (ERT) which results in great improvement for the computational efficiency. It transpires that the present numerical simulation results are in good agreement with the data obtained for the spall tests of concrete in terms of failure pattern, strain and dynamic tensile strength. It also transpires that the present model can reproduce the experimentally observed phenomenon that the amplitude of reflected tensile wave increases with increasing propagation distance which is caused largely by damage growth in concrete materials.