The use of multiscale schemes for computational failure evaluations of composites mate- rials has become a promising topic for evaluating the complex degradation mechanisms at different scales of observations and to achieve accurate information on the effects of these subscales…
The use of multiscale schemes for computational failure evaluations of composites mate- rials has become a promising topic for evaluating the complex degradation mechanisms at different scales of observations and to achieve accurate information on the effects of these subscales degra- dation processes on the macroscopic response behavior. In the framework of standard finite element procedures, both concurrent and semi-concurrent multiscale procedures were considered so far for analyzing failure behavior of quasi-brittle materials. Whenit comes to composite materials such as concrete, which are characterized by inclusions or aggregatesthatarestronglyheterogeneouswithrespecttosizeandgeometry,itisabsolutelynecessary to take into account the mesoscopicscale, sinceitseriouslyaffectsthemacroscopicresponsebehavior. However,therearewell-foundedquestionsaboutthecapabilitiesofstandardfiniteelementprocedures to represent heterogeneous mesoscopic structures such as concrete, because they impose geometric constraints and unrealistic boundary conditions that distort the resulting numerical solutions. In this work a new approach is pursued for mesoscale analysis of concrete failure behavior. This is based on combining Virtual Elements (VE) and interfaces in the framework of the discrete approach. In the first part of this work, the basis of the VE technology and of the considered interface model are outlined. Then, the procedure for concrete-mesoscopic meshing proposed in this work based on combining VEM and non-linear interface elements (IE) is detailed. Finally, numerical analysis are presented involving stress paths and failure behavior that shows the potential and efficiency of the approach based on VE and IE for composite materials like concrete are discussed.