Abstract
The widely used wet‐screening method in the experimental testing of hydraulic fully graded concrete inevitably results in a gap between the real mechanical parameters of hydraulic fully graded concrete specimens and those of the corresponding wet‐screened specimens and therefore necessitates the comparative study on their mechanical behaviors. To this end, a two‐dimensional mesoscale modeling methodology is developed for simulating the tensile fracturing behaviors of hydraulic fully graded and wet‐screened concretes, and extensive Monte Carlo simulations are performed. The individual effects of specimen size variation, variation of gradation and volume fraction of coarse aggregates, and the weaker interfacial transition zones surrounding the large coarse aggregates to be removed by wet‐screening are detailed followed by the discussion on the combined effect of these three main factors. All the mean values of the macroscopic mechanical parameters related to tensile fracturing behaviors are found to show significant change in response to wet‐screening, and the underlying differentiation mechanism and governing factor(s) are identified. Furthermore, it is shown that the randomness of the investigated parameters can be roughly described by the Gaussian distribution, and the dispersion of each of the investigated parameters of hydraulic fully graded concrete is higher than that of the corresponding wet‐screened concrete.
Highlights
Graded concrete is widely used in the construction of hydraulic structures such as gravity dam and arch dam [1]
Results and Discussion e uniaxial tensile fracturing behaviors of hydraulic threegraded concrete with AF 50% in the sense of 2D and the proportions of small, medium, and large coarse aggregate set to 0.3, 0.3, and 0.4, respectively, and the corresponding wetscreened concrete are compared in detail
The di erences in macroscopic mechanical parameters related to tensile fracturing behaviors of HFGC and the wet-screened concrete specimens are mainly attributed to three factors: specimen size variation, variation of gradation and volume fraction of coarse aggregate, and the weaker interfacial transition zones (ITZs) surrounding large coarse aggregates
Summary
Graded concrete is widely used in the construction of hydraulic structures such as gravity dam and arch dam [1]. Compared to ordinary concrete with the maximum size of aggregate (MSA) no more than 40 mm, hydraulic fully graded concrete (hereinafter referred to as HFGC) employs larger coarse aggregates. The MSA reaches to 80 mm in the case of hydraulic three-graded concrete, while for the four-graded case, the MSA is even larger and increases up to 150 mm (or 120 mm). With regard to identifying the mechanical parameters of concrete, the larger aggregate size implies that a larger size of concrete specimens, typically at least three times of MSA, is needed to fulfill the requirement of statistical representations [6]. Compared to the standard specimen with L equal to 150 mm prepared for ordinary concrete, the larger specimen for HFGC causes particular challenges when conducting experimental testing in the usual concrete laboratory, including large size of the testing machine, inconvenience of testing operation, and high testing expense, which further hampers to a large extent the direct experimental testing on HFGC specimens [7]
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