Mesoscale Mechanical Discrete Model for Cementitious Composites with Microfibers

Engineering ›› DOI: 10.1016/j.eng.2024.11.017

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Received	Accepted	Published
2024-03-21	2024-11-26
Issue Date	Revised Date
2024-12-23

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Abstract

Microfibers (less than 100 µm in diameter) are commonly employed in structural applications to minimize early shrinkage cracking and lower pore pressure during fires. For any application, micro fiber-reinforced concrete (FRC) structural behavior and durability must be estimated using the mechanical constitutive law. Formulating a mechanical constitutive law for FRC presents several difficulties in terms of comprehending the physical principles and employing suitable numerical techniques. A novel model called “Lattice Discrete Particle Model for micro-FRC (LDPM-MicroF)” is presented to simulate the fracture behavior of black micro-FRC. An equivalent fiber diameter coefficient has been defined to balance modeling accuracy and computational cost so that the LDPM-MicroF model can simulate the mechanical responses of engineered cementitious composites. The unimodal variation in tensile strength caused by the increase in microfiber dose is assessed and quantitatively reproduced by LDPM-MicroF predictions. This phenomenon is explained by a combination of mesoscopic mechanisms and the “near-field effect” of the fibers. A small number of microfibers can improve the strength of the matrix and thus slightly the tensile strength. However, when the dosage of microfibers exceeds a certain amount, the tensile strength decreases as the contribution of the fiber bridging force to the strength becomes lower than that of the replaced matrix. This research has provided new insights into the physical comprehension of the mechanical properties of micro-FRC, which has significant implications for the field of study.

Keywords

Microfiber / Fiber reinforced concrete / Unimodal tensile strength variation / Mesoscopic discrete modeling

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Lei Shen, Linfeng Hu, Giovanni Di Luzio, Maosen Cao, Lei Xu, Gianluca Cusatis. Mesoscale Mechanical Discrete Model for Cementitious Composites with Microfibers. Engineering DOI:10.1016/j.eng.2024.11.017

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CRediT authorship contribution statement

Lei Shen: Writing - review & editing, Writing - original draft, Validation, Investigation. Linfeng Hu: Writing - original draft, Validation, Methodology, Investigation. Giovanni Di Luzio: Writing - review & editing, Writing - original draft, Validation, Methodology, Investigation. Maosen Cao: Writing - review & editing, Funding acquisition, Conceptualization. Lei Xu: Writing - review & editing, Writing - original draft, Validation, Investigation. Gianluca Cusatis: Writing - review & editing, Supervision, Methodology, Conceptualization.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51908195 and 52250410359), the Young Elite Scientists Sponsorship Program of Jiangsu Provincial Association for Science and Technology (TJ-2023-043), and the Jiangsu International Joint Research and Development Program (BZ2022010). Gianluca Cusatis and Giovanni Di Luzio received no funding for their contribution to this study.

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Lei Shen, Linfeng Hu, Giovanni Di Luzio, Maosen Cao, Lei Xu, and Gianluca Cusatis declare that they have no conflict of interest or financial conflicts to disclose.

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