Adaptive concurrent multi-scale FEM for trans-scale damage evolution in heterogeneous concrete

Abstract

This paper presents a new adaptive concurrent multi-scale FEM (ACMFEM) to simulate the trans-scale failure processes from material damage in meso-scale to local failure area in macro-scale and eventually to global failure for concrete structures. The method can carry out automatically trans-scale coupling analysis on the failure process without user intervention. As cases studies of the method, the trans-scale failure processes of a L-shaped concrete component subjected to gradually increasing displacement loading and reinforced concrete (RC) column under seismic loading are simulated by using the developed method. The results show that, the developed method can be used to reveal the trans-scale failure mechanism of concrete structures by considering the process from material damage in meso-scale to local failure area in macro-scale and eventually to global failure in structural scale; and it is reliable in simulation on evolving damage and failure in concrete structures with the adaptive capability as well as better computational efficiency.