An adaptive p-FEM for three-dimensional concrete aggregate models

Numerical simulation for concrete aggregate models (CAMs) with different shape aggregates usually requires high accuracy and convergence near the material interfaces. But high memory usage will be needed for those traditional finite element methods such as the method by using mesh refinement throughout the domain. Thus, an adaptive p-version finite element method (p-FEM) is proposed in this paper for the solution of 3D CAM problems, and meanwhile the resulting adaptive computational algorithm and post-processing program are presented. We firstly focused two typical 3D weak discontinuity problems on the influence of different convergence criterions for the computational results of each point on the interface in order to verify the efficiency and convergence of the resulting p-FEM, and then this method is successfully applied to the numerical simulation of CAMs with different shape aggregates. In addition, an efficient hybrid realization method which combines ANSYS and Hypermesh software is also presented in order to quickly establish the geometric models of 3D CAMs. The numerical results have been shown that the proposed p-FEM can efficiently solve the concrete-like particle-reinforced composite problems and more accurate numerical results can be obtained under the case of fewer elements used in simulation of CAMs, even there being some elements with poor quality.