Adaptive multi-scale beam lattice method for competitive trans-scale crack growth simulation of heterogeneous concrete-like materials

Abstract

In order to overcome the shortcomings of traditional pure macro- and meso-scale crack growth simulation method, here an adaptive multi-scale beam lattice method (AMBLM) is developed to simulate trans-scale crack growth process from meso-scale to macro-scale for quasi-brittle heterogeneous concrete-like materials with low computation cost. In the trans-scale crack growth simulation, dangerous regions can be automatically found and the meso-scale model is then re-modeled in the found region, which can ensure continuous changes in the adaptive multi-scale modeling due to cracking. In this way, the meso-scale simulation is only implemented in the dangerous region of crack growth paths, and macro-scale simulation is implemented in other regions. This can improve computational efficiency of the developed method significantly. In order to verify the developed AMBLM, the trans-scale crack growth process of two concrete specimens are simulated. Then the simulation results are compared with experimental results, which show that the developed AMBLM is effective. In addition, the simulation results are also compared with the computation results obtained from pure meso-scale simulation. The results show that AMBLM has very high precision and superior computational efficiency on multi-scale crack growth simulation of quasi-brittle concrete-like materials.