Multi-scale numerical analysis for linear elastic behavior of clay concrete

Abstract

Clay concrete is the main material of the embankment dam impervious wall, and its linear elastic property has significant influence on safe operation of dam impervious system. To deeply study the linear elastic property of clay concrete, this paper combines the multi-scale and multi-phase structure characteristics of the material and proposes a multi-scale analyses method to conduct the material research at the mechanism level. In this paper, the clay concrete material is firstly divided into several scales based on the scale information of different phases inside the material. Afterwards, on the basis of micro hydration law of clay and cement, a random adjoint growth model is established for the reconstruction of microscopic RVE of clay concrete. And reconstruction of the mesoscopic and macroscopic RVEs of clay concrete are conducted by randomly placing spherical inclusions in the research area. To establish the relationship between the linear elastic properties of each scale model, the homogenization method is applied to calculate the equivalent linear elastic property on the coarse scale according to the reconstruction of the fine scale model. And the macro-scale linear elastic property of the clay concrete can finally be obtained by the progressive homogenization process from the micro-scale model to the macroscopic model.