PHASE-FIELD MODELING OF CONCRETE: NUMERICAL SIMULATION AND EXPERIMENTAL VERIFICATION

Abstract

Simulation of concrete structures behavior is very popular in engineering design, as the concrete is the most used the material in the world. The possibilities are related to the development of Finite Element Method (FEM) based software and the possibility to implement advanced constitutive models or computational mechanics methods which can provide satisfying results. The most popular concrete constitutive model available in many FEM software is Concrete Damage Plasticity (CDP) model which takes into account both tension and compression response, as well as damage field which can be considered as the level of stiffness decrease in the material. Another approach is a Phase-Field Damage Model (PFDM) which found application in recent years in modeling response of various materials exposed to extreme loading conditions. In this paper, the Drucker-Prager constitutive model is enhanced to compute a strain energy which produces damage in material under the certain conditions. The damage is considered as the additional degree of freedom in 3D solid element, where the threshold value of a critical total strain energy is declared as the limit quantity. The functionality of the proposed approach is considered by comparison of experimental and simulation results for uniaxial compression test.