ECCOMAS 2024

Simulation of Tri-Axial Stress Redistribution Effect in Concrete Under Fatigue Loading: Lattice Discrete Model vs. Microplane Model

  • Aguilar, Mario (RWTH Aachen University)
  • Baktheer, Abedulgader (RWTH Aachen University)
  • Wan-Wendner, Roman (Ghent University)
  • Vorel, Jan (Czech Technical University in Prague)
  • Vořechovský, Miroslav (Brno University of Technology)
  • Chudoba, Rostislav (RWTH Aachen University)

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Resistance to cyclic loading is essential issue for economic, efficient and reliable design of concrete structures. Relevant examples of structures which have to resist up to millions of loading cycles are road and railway bridges, as well as onshore and offshore wind turbine towers. A deeper insight into the fatigue behavior of concrete is needed to significantly reduce the material consumption, to enhance the service life and to increase the reliability of engineering structures. The aim of this work is the development of advanced numerical models reflecting the underlying microstructural dissipative mechanisms that govern the development and propagation of concrete fatigue damage. The fundamental idea is to bind the fatigue damage growth with cumulative sliding deformations of a representative interface within the aggregate material structure. A thermodynamically formulated generalized interface model is employed to describe the behavior of interfaces with 3D kinematics under various mixed-mode stress configurations, including monotonic, cyclic, and fatigue loading [1]. This model will be applied to two idealizations of concrete material structure: the lattice discrete model and the microplane model. The mesoscale lattice discrete model is able to reflect interactions between individual aggregates during the fatigue damage propagation and to reproduce the local stress redistribution phenomena at subcritical fatigue loading. The results of the discrete model will be compared with the continuum microplane model based on the same fatigue damage hypothesis with the goal to assess its ability of reproducing the fatigue phenomena such as the development of the experimentally observed fatigue creep curves and the changing shape of hysteretic loops. REFERENCES [1] R. Chudoba, M. Voˇrechovsk ́y, M. Aguilar, & A. Baktheer (2022). Coupled sliding–decohesion–compression model for a consistent description of monotonic and fatigue behavior of material interfaces. Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, 398, 115259.