We study the effect of discretization of lattice models. Two basic cases are examined: (i) ho- mogeneous lattices, where all elements share the same strength and (ii) lattices in which the properties are as- signed to the elements according to…
We study the effect of discretization of lattice models. Two basic cases are examined: (i) ho- mogeneous lattices, where all elements share the same strength and (ii) lattices in which the properties are as- signed to the elements according to their correspondence to three phases of concrete, namely matrix, aggre- gates, and the interfacial transitional zone. These dependencies are studied with both, notched and unnotched beams loaded in three point bending. We report the results for regular discretization and irregular networks obtained via Voronoi tessellation. The dependence of strength is compared to various size effect formulas, and we show that in the case of homogeneous lattices, the fineness of discretization of the specimens of the same size can mimic variations in the size of lattice models with the same discretization density. In the case of heterogeneity (ii), we report how both the peak force and fracture energy depend on the mesh resolution.