Finite Element Modeling for Damage of Recycled Aggregate Concrete

Damage modeling is essential to help produce quality recycled aggregate concrete. This study uses Finite Element Method to simulate the crack pattern of RAC based on a realistic concrete model with randomly distributed recycled aggregates. The arbitrary shape of aggregates, the new and old ITZs are constructed by Fourier series. Damage plasticity constitutive material model is adopted to describe the response behavior of interfacial transition zone and mortar. The crack patterns in RAC are visually displayed by plotting the contour of the damage variables. The stress-strain behaviors of RAC and normal concrete are found to be different. This work shows that FEM with damage plasticity constitutive model can be valuable for capturing damage of RAC.