A direct FEM approach to model mesoscale concrete and connect non-matching meshes in multiscale analysis

Abstract

The mechanical degradation of concrete structures is a phenomenon dependent on the material heterogeneity observed at mesoscale. As the mechanical degradation is a localized phenomenon, structural members and structures may be simulated using the concurrent multiscale analysis technique. Thus, only the most critical regions are modeled in mesoscale, reducing the computational cost compared to the simulation of the entire structure at this scale. This work presents two contributions in concurrent multiscale analysis. The first contribution introduces an alternative representation of the mesoscale interfacial transition zone (ITZ) of the concrete together with a strategy that allows modeling particles (coarse aggregates) without degrees of freedom. The resulting ITZ representation allows the simulation of more realistic discrete cracks in concrete modeling. The second contribution uses particle-like elements without degrees of freedom as coupling elements to model non-matching meshes between different media. The proposed coupling technique does not add degrees of freedom and does not use penalty or Lagrange Multipliers methods. Experimental and numerical results are used in order to validate the proposed multiscale formulation regarding concrete specimen simulations.