Phase-Field Modelling of a Multiphase Material

Resumo

The Phase-Field Modelling has been widely used to model crack propagation. In that model, the discrete
crack of Griffith’s theory is transformed into a diffuse crack that spreads on a certain region, according to the length
scale parameter. The Phase-Field variable is calculated as a new nodal degree of freedom. It represents, at each
point, the amount of damage suffered by the material, in such way that when it’s zero the material is intact, and
when it’s equal to one the material is completely damaged. In this work the Phase-Field analysis has been used to
study the fracture process in a multiphase material, composed by a mortar with aggregates randomly distributed
across the domain. The influence of the material properties on the structural behaviour was also investigated. All
the implementation was done in INSANE, an open-source software, developed in Java at the Structural Engineering
Department of the Federal University of Minas Gerais. Numerical simulations will be presented considering the
variation of the sample size and the parameters of the materials.