Modelling the mechanical response of adobe components under uniaxial loadings

This paper presents a constitutive relationship to describe the uniaxial response in statics of brick and mortar samples of Adobe. This defines a traditional masonry whose components are made of soil mixture reinforced with fibres. Only recently Adobe has started attracting scientific attention, primarily as a consequence of the dramatic...

The influence of moisture on the fracture behaviour of concrete loaded in dynamic tension

Dynamic tests demonstrate an extensive rate effect on the tensile strength as well as the post-peak behaviour beyond loading rates of about 50 GPa/s. One of the possible explanations for the observed rate effects on the fracture behaviour is enhanced resistance by moisture in the pores. To study the influence of the moisture content and pore...

Modelling dynamic tensile failure of quasi-brittle materials using stress-enhanced nonlocal models

The development of realistic numerical tools to efficiently model the response of concrete structures subjected to close-in detonations and high velocity impacts has been one of the major quests in defense research. Under these loading conditions, quasi-brittle materials undergo a multitude of failure (damage) mechanisms. Dynamic tensile failure...

Dynamic tensile resistance of concrete-split Hopkinson bar test

The behavior of concrete structures is strongly influenced by the loading rate. Compared to quasi-static loading, on meso and macro-scale concrete loaded by impact loading acts in a different way. First, there is a strain-rate influence on strength, stiffness, ductility, and, second, there are inertia forces activated which influence the...

A mesoscale modelling perspective of cracking process and fracture energy under high strain rate in tension

This paper presents a numerical modelling study on the simulation of the cracking process and fracture energy in concrete under high strain rate. To capture the stress wave effect and the damage evolution at the meso-length scale, both a homogeneous model with a millimetreresolution mesh and an explicit heterogeneous mesoscale model with random...