Abstract
• A novel method for generating fully-graded concrete mesostructures is presented. • Aggregate coarsening is performed to improve the achievable volume fraction. • 3D mesostructures of practical fully-graded dam concrete are generated. • The damage and cracking behavior of fully-graded concrete in tension is studied. The fully-graded concrete (FGC) is widely used in hydraulic mass concrete structures. An exquisite mesoscale model for FGC is essential for accurately simulating its complex damage and cracking behavior. However, due to the presence of massive aggregates and the requirement of high aggregate volume fraction, it is still challenging to generate the three-dimensional (3D) mesostructure of FGC close to reality. A novel and efficient method, termed the hierarchical point cloud method, is proposed for generating the 3D FGC mesostructures. Innovatively, a hierarchical four-level point cloud with a specific spatial structure is defined within the designated domain and serves as the basis for efficiently placing the four-graded aggregates in FGC. The aggregate coarsening is adopted as a supplementary way to achieve the target aggregate packing density in high volume fraction case. In addition, the four virtual aggregate storage piles containing sufficient aggregates within different grading segments are pre-established for providing the required four-graded aggregates. The method efficiency is evaluated by comparison with two traditional methods. The standard samples of mesostructure with an aggregate volume fraction of up to 63.63% are generated for the practical FGC used in Jinping-I arch dam. The numerical tension tests are further carried out for gaining insights into the damage and cracking behavior of FGC. The results show that the arrangement of relative large aggregates, especially the extra-large aggregates, dominates the localization of damage and the final crack distribution.
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