A dimensional analysis based thermal–mechanical damage model for crack growth simulation of concrete-like materials at elevated temperatures

Abstract

A dimensional analysis based thermal–mechanical damage model is established to describe softening behaviors of concrete-like materials at elevated temperatures. An iterative procedure for damage updating is coupled in the modified continuum damage mechanics (CDM) based finite element method (FEM) to simulate the thermal cracking process of concrete-like materials. Here two numericalexamples including ablation and thermalhot expansionof concrete specimens were utilized to support the developed thermal–mechanical damage model and thermal cracking simulation method by comparing the corresponding experimental results. The comparison results verify that the model and method can be used to study thermal–mechanical behaviors of concrete-like materials at elevated temperatures with high computational efficiency.