Computational modeling of high performance steel fiber reinforced concrete using a micromorphic approach

Abstract

A finite element methodology for simulating the failure of high performance fiber reinforced concrete composites (HPFRC),with arbitrarily oriented short fibers, is presented. The composite material model is based on a micromorphic approach. Using the framework provided by this theory, the body configuration space is described through two kinematical descriptors. At the structural level, the displacement field represents the standard kinematical descriptor. Additionally, a morphological kinematical descriptor, the micromorphic field, is introduced. It describes the fiber-matrix relative displacement, or slipping mechanism of the bond, observed at the mesoscale level. In the first part of this paper,wesummarize the model formulation of the micromorphic approach presented in a previous work by the authors. In the second part, and as the main contribution of the paper, we address specific issues related to the numerical aspects involved in the computational implementation of the model. The developed numerical procedure is based on a mixed finite element technique. The number of dofs per node changes according with the number of fiber bundles simulated in the composite. Then, a specific solution scheme is proposed to solve the variable number of unknowns in the discrete model.