Multiscale failure modeling of concrete: Micromechanical modeling, discontinuous homogenization and parallel computations

A multiscale failure model for concrete materials is proposed. At the microscale, the mechanical behavior of hardening cement paste is studied by a numerical framework that combines a cement hydration code and a finite element program. Macroscopic failure of the material is represented by cohesive cracks of which behavior is determined during the simulation based on nested finite element computations realized on microscopic samples. To accelerate the performance of heavy multiscale computations, a parallel implementation is presented. Numerical examples are given to demonstrate the capabilities of the proposed framework. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.