Innovative Meshless Computational Method for the Analysis of Fiber-Reinforced Concrete (FRC) Structures

Material innovations in composites and ability to predict response of composite structures play an important role in engineering concrete structures resilient to multiple hazards such as dynamic loads. The finite element method is generally used to discretely model fiber reinforcement as beam or truss elements by coupling them with solid concrete elements, and thus assigning the full bond between concrete and fibers. However for modeling fiber reinforced concrete (FRC) structures, this application is hindered by a large number of fibers and associated computational expense. To overcome these limitations, a mesh-free analysis framework is introduced to model interactions between cementitious materials and fibers based on the non-ordinary state-based peridynamics theory. It is demonstrated in two numerical problems subjected to static and dynamic loads that the proposed meshless FRC analysis framework, including a semi-discrete fiber modeling approach, can effectively characterize the pull-out behavior of fibers across cracks without explicitly modeling the fibers and development of local cracks/crack coalescences.