Continuum-Based Modelling of Recycled Aggregate Concrete

Abstract

The increasing use of Recycled Aggregate Concretes (RACs) in the last years due to the adverse environmental impact caused by manufacturing processes in the construction sector, makes imperative the formulation of theoretical and numerical constitutive models to effectively predict the mechanical behavior of materials and structures, to characterize the brittle or ductile failure modes at different loading regimes of such new buildings. In this work a thermodynamically consistent non-local gradient and fracture energy-based plasticity theory applicable to standard concrete at the final hardened state is extended to simulate the mechanical behavior of concretes with variable content of recycled aggregates.
The predictive capabilities of the proposed constitutive formulation for RACs are verified against experimental results of tests performed at the Materials and Structures Laboratory of the University of Salerno. Both the experimental results and the theoretical formulations proposed in this paper stem out from the interuniversity collaboration developed within the framework of the European Project EnCoR (www.encore-fp7.unisa.it).