Multiscale assessment of damage during hydration of large structures

Resumo

This work presents a multiscale framework for damage modeling in cement-based materials (CBM), incorporating the effects of hydration within their heterogeneous microstructure where the degradation occurs within the cement phase. Thus, damage initiation and evolution are influenced by microscale inhomogeneities, resulting in a meso-micromechanical damage formulation. To simulate the thermo-chemo-mechanical behavior of macroscopic structures, a two-scale finite element approach is adopted, the Direct FE2, in which the heterogeneous microstructure of the CBM is modeled through a representative volume element (RVE) where all the material properties, constitutive and evolution laws are defined. The entire framework is implemented in Abaqus® using a combination of Python scripting and Fortran user subroutines. A L-shaped body is presented to illustrate the evolution of damage. The results provide valuable insights into early-age damage mechanisms induced by hydration, highlighting the relationship between the heterogeneous CBM microstructure and the effective structural performance.