A random medium model for simulation of concrete failure

A random medium model is developed to describe damage and failure of concrete. In the first place, to simulate the evolving cracks in a mesoscale, the concrete is randomly discretized as irregular finite elements. Moreover, the cohesive elements are inserted into the adjacency of finite elements as the possible cracking paths. The spatial variation of the material properties is considered using a 2-D random field, and the stochastic harmonic function method is adopted to simulate the sample of the fracture energy random field in the analysis. Then, the simulations of concrete specimens are given to describe the different failure modes of concrete under tension. Finally, based on the simulating results, the probability density distributions of the stress-strain curves are solved by the probability density evolution methods. Thus, the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed model are verified in both the sample level and collection level.