On the energy dissipation in confined concrete subjected to shear cyclic loading

Abstract

AbstractThe establishment of a simple engineering rule for predicting the fatigue failure of concrete has been pursued over the past decades. An energetic approach to the matter seems to be an attractive option that many researchers have embraced. In the present work, the authors attempt to contribute to the establishment of such a rule. In particular, the energy dissipation of confined concrete subjected to shear cyclic loading is studied and quantified. For this purpose, a microplane fatigue model recently introduced by the authors, referred to as MS1, is used. It aims to capture the fundamental inelastic mechanisms driving the tri‐axial stress redistribution within a material zone during the fatigue damage process in concrete. To this end, the fatigue damage evolution is linked to a measure of cumulative inelastic shear strain at the microplane level, reflecting the accumulation of fatigue damage due to internal shear/sliding between aggregates at subcritical pulsating load levels. To isolate the dissipative mechanism mentioned above, test configurations with dominant shear stress seem to be more appropriate. In the present work, a punch‐through shear test (PTST) FE model is used to induce shear‐dominated stresses and strains along the ligament of a specimen. Numerical studies are first presented to evaluate the behavior and energy dissipation at the elemental interface level. The interface is introduced in the MS1 microplane material model, which is capable of reproducing the concrete behavior under monotonic, cyclic, and fatigue loading with consistent set of material parameters. Quantification of the energy dissipation for each introduced dissipative mechanism is performed at each microplane and integrated via a well‐established homogenization scheme to evaluate the macroscopic energy dissipation. Later, an analysis of the energy dissipation of the PTST process zone is performed for cyclic loading under two different subcritical cyclic load amplitudes.