A micromechanical four-phase model to predict the compressive failure surface of cement concrete

TL;DRAbstract

In this work, a micromechanical model is used in order to predict the failure surface of cement concrete subject to multi-axial compression. In the adopted model, the concrete material is schematised as a composite with the following constituents: coarse aggregate (gravel), fine aggregate (sand) and cement paste. The cement paste contains some voids which grow during the loading process. In fact, the non-linear behavior of the concrete is attributed to the creation of cracks in the cement paste; the effect of the cracks is taken into account by introducing equivalent voids (inclusions with zero stiffness) in the cement paste. The three types of inclusions (namely gravel, sand and voids) have different scales, so that the overall behavior of the concrete is obtained by the composition of three different homogenizations; in the sense that the concrete is regarded as the homogenized material of the two-phase composite constituted of the gravel and the mortar; in turn, the mortar is the ho

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