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Meso-scale stochastic modeling for mechanical properties of structural lightweight aggregate concrete

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Abstract

A stochastic method for modeling the lightweight aggregate concrete was proposed based on the mesoscopic components of the LWAC. The space of the material was first divided into several elements larger than the aggregate particle, and then the field of lightweight aggregate was formed in units of these elements according to a simplified function of probabilistic distribution based on Gaussian distribution. The spatial correlation was subsequently considered by modifying the aggregate field with the guidance of a correlation function and the distance between two elements. A prism made of LWAC from available literature was employed to calibrate the materials parameters necessary for finite element analysis. Then a tested column and a beam reported in the literature with a similar mixture of LWAC to the prism were modeled utilizing the proposed stochastic method. Finally, comparisons between test results and simulations were conducted. The proposed method showed an ignorable sensitivity to the element size and good precision to the performance of axial column, beam, and deep beam made of LWAC.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, China (52078042, 51878054), and the Natural Science Foundation of Shaanxi Province, China (2020GY-248), Postdoctoral Science Foundation of China, China (2019M663915XB).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Civil Engineering, Chang’an University, Xi’an, China

    Tao Wu, Yang Liu, Xi Liu & Binfeng Zhang

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  1. Tao Wu
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  2. Yang Liu
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  3. Xi Liu
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Correspondence to Tao Wu.

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Wu, T., Liu, Y., Liu, X. et al. Meso-scale stochastic modeling for mechanical properties of structural lightweight aggregate concrete. Mater Struct 55, 17 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1617/s11527-021-01874-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1617/s11527-021-01874-9

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