Fibre-cement boards are commonly used on external lightweight façades for different buildings. A fibre cement material presents a pseudo strain-hardening behaviour. In addition, the post-peak is dependent of the humidity content of the material and, in traction, the material presents…
Fibre-cement boards are commonly used on external lightweight façades for different buildings. A fibre cement material presents a pseudo strain-hardening behaviour. In addition, the post-peak is dependent of the humidity content of the material and, in traction, the material presents a multiple crack behaviour due to the interface relations between the fibres and the cementitious matrix. Understand the different mechanical behaviours of these boards, the influence of hygrometric conditions on their constitutive law and their fracture initiation and propagation criteria is important to optimize the design of facades systems. This article proposes an evaluation of the capability of the XFEM and the Hashin damage techniques implemented on ABAQUS to simulate fibre-cement boards behaviour through the 3-point bending test and the direct tensile test. Experimental results show a toughness and ductility increase with material saturation. The numerical examples indicate the capability of both techniques to capture a softening behaviour but a limitation to simulate hardening by means of fibre-bridging mechanism with the current formulations.