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A multiscale oriented concept for the analyses of steel fiber reinforced

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 VIII International Conference on Fracture Mechanics of Concrete and Concrete Structures
FraMCoS-8
J.G.M. Van Mier, G. Ruiz, C. Andrade, R.C. Yu and X.X. Zhang (Eds)

A MULTISCALE ORIENTED CONCEPT FOR THE ANALYSES OF STEEL

FIBER REINFORCED CONCRETE MATERIALS AND STRUCTURES

Yijian Zhan∗ and Günther Meschke

Institute for Structural Mechanics, Ruhr-University Bochum
Universitätsstraße 150, 44780 Bochum, Germany
e-mail: yijian.zhan@rub.de, guenther.meschke@rub.de

Key words: Fiber Reinforced Concrete, Multiscale Model, Fiber Pullout, Crack Bridging, Fracture-
micromechanics, Embedded Crack

Abstract: A multiscale oriented approach to the analyses of steel fiber reinforced concrete materials
and structures is proposed. At the micro level, the pullout behavior of a steel fiber embedded in con-
crete matrix, either straight or with hooked end, with or without inclination to the loading direction,
is investigated by means of analytical or numerical models which take into account the interfacial
slip, the plastic deformation of fiber and the localized damage of concrete. A representative volume
element (RVE) containing a number of fibers is used to describe the composite behavior at the meso-
scale. For a certain opening crack, the bridging effect is obtained by the integration of the individual
pullout response of all fibers crossing the crack; the mechanical properties of the RVE is analyzed us-
ing a modified fracture-micromechanics model. At the macroscopic level, the Finite Element Method
is used, applying the Embedded Crack approach, for which the cohesive behavior along macro-cracks
and the material properties of the continuous parts are obtained from the homogenization of fiber-
crack interactions and the corresponding RVE, respectively.

1 INTRODUCTION tility of FRC is taken into account by means of

1.1 Background a modification of the softening law in plain con-
The development of fiber reinforced con- crete models (e.g. [2]). More recently, advanced
crete (FRC) can be traced back to the 1960’s, Finite Element technologies are applied, for ex-
when the significance of adding steel fibers to ample the Partition of Unity approach, by rep-
enhance the ductility of plain concrete was rec- resenting the slip behavior of individual fibers
ognized. The expansion of the research has at a macroscopic level [3].
brought us FRC composites featuring various
types of fiber reinforcement using different ma- 1.2 Multiscale oriented modeling concept
terials, sizes, shapes, surfaces, contents, etc., For the numerical analyses of FRC compos-
recently leading to high performance materi- ite materials and structures, a multiscale ori-
als such as engineered cementitious composites ented approach enables us to formulate the be-
(ECC) [1]. havior of every constituent (fiber and matrix in
In addition to the experimental investigation, our case) and the interactions between them at
large efforts have been devoted to the model- different length scales [4]. Aiming at the devel-
ing of FRC on the material as well as on the opment of a simulation and optimization plat-
structural level. Typically, a phenomenological form for structures (e.g. segmental tunnel lin-
approach is adopted, where the enhanced duc- ings) made of FRC and hybrid FRC compos-

1352
 Yijian Zhan and Günther Meschke

ite in conjunction with conventional reinforced In the following sections, we first show
concrete, a multiscale modeling concept is pro- the models for the single fiber pullout behav-
posed in the present work (Figure 1): ior which are validated for different situations.
Next, making use of the pullout models and by
up-scaling the information from the micro level,
the fiber bridging effect on an opening crack
and the constitutive response of an RVE are an-
alyzed at the meso-scale. In the third part, the
Embedded Crack model is introduced and ap-
plied for the preliminary numerical simulation
of an FRC structure.

2 Micro-scale: single fiber pullout models

2.1 Straight fiber pullout without inclina-
tion
Being the most basic case, straight fiber
pullout without inclination with respect to the
loading direction has been well investigated by
means of laboratory tests, numerical simula-
Figure 1: Multiscale oriented approach to the analyses
of structures made of steel fiber reinforced concrete (in tions as well as analytical models. It is gener-
conjunction with conventional reinforced concrete). ally accepted that the pullout procedure can be
divided into three stages: Bonded state, debond-
ing stage and pulling-out phase (Figure 2).
• At the structural (macroscopic) level, the
Finite Element Method is used, making
use of a model which is suitable to cap-
ture propagating cracks. The interface
behavior along the macro-cracks and the
material properties of the intact parts are
obtained from the analysis of the corre-
sponding representative volume elements
(RVE).
• An RVE containing a number of dis-
tributed fibers is used to describe the
composite material behavior at the meso- Figure 2: Straight fiber pullout without inclination: (a)
scale. For a certain growing crack within debonding stage, (b) sliding phase, (c) proposed interfa-
the RVE, the bridging effect is obtained cial friction law.
from the summation of pullout responses
of all the fibers intercepting the crack. According to the shear-lag concept (e.g.
The effective mechanical properties of [5]), an interfacial friction law (τ − s relation)
the RVE is generated by means of mi- is proposed in the present work, as illustrated
cromechanical homogenization. in Figure 2c, where τ denotes the interface fric-
• At the micro-level, analytical or numeri- tional stress and s the relative displacement at
cal models are developed in order to de- a point on the fiber axis x; τmax is the bonding
scribe the pullout behavior of single fiber strength of the interface, τ0 the asymptotic value
embedded in the matrix with arbitrary in- of the frictional stress and sref a parameter con-
clination w.r.t. the crack plane. trolling the descending branch of the curve. Ap-

1353
 Yijian Zhan and Günther Meschke

plying the proposed interfacial friction law, the clination is calibrated, with the interfacial pa-
load-displacement relations (F −u diagrams) at rameters determined; then we proceed with a
the free end are obtained for the whole pullout numerical algorithm to generate the complete
process. force-displacement diagram for the situation of
straight fiber pullout with an arbitrary inclina-
2.2 Pullout of inclined straight fiber tion angle. The model developed in the present
Compared to the situation described above, work describes the pullout behavior with satis-
modeling the pullout behavior of an inclined factory performance (see the diagrams in [8]).
fiber involves additional complexities corre-
lated with the additional frictional stress, plastic 2.3 Pullout of inclined hooked end fiber
deformation of the fiber and change of the ge- In comparison to straight fibers, steel fibers
ometrical state, caused by the lateral pressure with deformed geometry usually exhibit higher
on the interface, yielding of the steel and partial ductility during the pullout process. One of the
damage of the matrix, repectively (see e.g. the most widely applied types of deformed steel
experimental observation in [6] and the analyti- fibers is the hooked end fiber, characterized
cal model in [7]). by the hook on each end. During the pullout
procedure, the resistance of the hooked end to
straightening often contributes, as an anchorage
effect, to the main portion of the total pullout
force, in comparison to the case of a straight
fiber, where the interfacial behavior plays the
main role [9].
The hooked end fiber pullout behavior is of-
ten investigated by means of laboratory tests.
However, due to the highly nonlinear local be-
Figure 3: Illustration of the inclined straight fiber pull-
havior of the hooked end and the surrounding
out problem: (a) crack initiation, (b) geometrical state of matrix, as well as the complicated interactions
(one side of) the fiber during pullout. between them (see the experimental observation
in e.g. [10]), only a few analytical models de-
scribing the hooked end fiber pullout without
The situation of an inclined fiber embedded inclination to the crack plane (e.g. [11]) can be
in the matrix is illustrated in Figure 3a, where found in the literature; the inclined situation is
θ indicates the inclination angle, O is the ini- only considered in [12].
tial intersection of the fiber axis and the crack
plane and C is the embedded end of the fiber.
For a certain pullout state corresponding to the
crack opening ∆ and concrete spalling S (see
Figure 3b), the additional fiber-concrete inter-
actions is analyzed via two sub-models referred
to as the cantilever-AB and the beam on elas-
tic foundation-BC. In both submodels, the force
equilibrium on the fiber sections is analyzed;
the free end pullout force corresponding to the
current pullout state is calculated. Figure 4: Numerical simulation of the hooked end fiber
The model described above is validated by pullout: Load-displacement diagram (upper), contour
plot of the von Mises stress (lower-left) and the compres-
means of the experimental results reported in
sive damage (lower-right).
[6]. First, the model for the pullout without in-

1354
 Yijian Zhan and Günther Meschke

To support the analytical formulation, nu- reinforced concrete at the meso level, consid-
merical models for the single fiber pullout be- ering an RVE of the composite material under
havior are developed, using the Finite Element tensile loading. Initially all the fibers are well
Analysis software Abaqus, by defining appro- bonded to the matrix and both constituents are
priate material models for the concrete and linear elastic. From the micromechanical point
steel, as well as the interface properties between of view, the increasing tension on the boundary
them. The numerical simulation provides not of the RVE will lead to the initiation of microc-
only the pullout load-displacement relation at racks at the inherent flaws within the RVE [14].
the free end, but also an insight into the prob- As the load increases, those microcracks tend
lem and a reference for the formulation of the to open and propagate, however, unlike in the
analytical model (Figure 4). situation of plain concrete, their opening is con-
Regarding the analytical model proposed strained by the bridging effect of the individ-
in the present work, the anchorage effect of ual fibers intersecting the cracks. To this end, it
the hooked end is represented by a multi- is essential to investigate the bridging stress vs.
linear load-displacement relation, capturing a crack opening relationship.
sequence of key states (Figure 5).
For every key state, the force equilibrium on Normal strength concrete, high strength steel, 0°
the segments of the hooked end is analyzed and 1000
Experiments
the resulting anchorage force is calculated, tak- 800
Model

ing into account the yielding of steel and the

damage of concrete. This submodel is then 600
Load [N]

combined with the straight fiber pullout model 400

described in the previous section, in order to
predict the load-displacement relation during 200

the hooked end fiber pullout with an arbitrary 0

inclination w.r.t. the loading direction. 0 2 4 6 8 10
Displacement [mm]

High strength concrete, normal strength steel, 45°

500
Experiments
Model
400

300
Load [N]

200
Figure 5: Key states during the hooked end fiber pullout.
100

The model is validated with the experimental 0

0 2 4 6 8 10
results reported in [13]. From Figure 6 we can Displacement [mm]
see that the analytical model captures success-
Figure 6: Inclined hooked end fiber pullout model valida-
fully the major feature observed during the pull- tion: Comparison between the results of analytical model
out of a hooked end steel fiber in concrete ma- and experiments in different cases.
trix for different values of the strength of con-
crete and steel fiber and the inclination angle.
3.1 Crack bridging effect
3 Meso-scale: FRC composite properties In [15], for a homogeneous (in terms of posi-
With the pullout behavior of single steel fiber tion) and isotropic (w.r.t. orientation) distribu-
embedded in concrete matrix investigated, the tion of fibers in the composite, the integration of
scope is now to analyze the behavior of fiber the pullout forces of all fibers crossing a crack

1355
 Yijian Zhan and Günther Meschke

divided by the cross sectional area of the RVE leading to the softening and failure of the
provides the bridging law, i.e. the relation be- material, or the RVE shows pseudo strain-
tween the fiber bridging stress σ f and the crack hardening response, which is typically ob-
opening displacement ∆. While in [15], ex- served in high performance fiber reinforced ce-
plicit analytical formulations of pullout force- ment composites materials (HPFRCC [16, 17]),
displacement relation are used, the pullout re- depends on the contribution of the evolving
sponse in the present work is obtained numer- crack bridging stress σ f . In the present work,
ically, and the integration over different posi- we propose a “modified fracture mechanics-
tions and orientations gives the fiber bridging micromechanics model” based on the combined
effect: fracture-micromechanics model for brittle ma-
1  terials with microcracks in [18]. However in
σ f (∆) = cr F (z, θ, ∆). (1) the proposed model for FRC the stress intensity
A z θ
factor, on which the Griffith fracture criterion
Acr denotes the cross sectional area of the RVE;
KI = KIc (2)
z and θ represent the position and orientation of
individual fibers, respectively; F is the single is based, is modified by defining KI∗ = KI +K f
fiber pullout force calculated by means of the [19, 20], in order to take into account the in-
models described in the previous section. fluence of fiber bridging mechanisms. K f de-
Figure 7 shows some results of the crack pends on the crack size r and the interfacial
bridging relation, considering different situa- friction behavior. The full model is currently
tions of the orientation distribution of fibers, in progress. As a first attempt, a simple rela-
which is represented by a spheroid: Z-axis co- tionship K f (r) = k f r is investigated (k f is
incides with the crack normal direction; X- a stiffness-like constant representing the effect
and Y-axes are parellel to the crack plane; the of fibers). The macroscopic constitutive behav-
semi-axes a and c represent the anisotropy (e.g. ior of the composite material, obtained from us-
a/c = 1 indicates the isotropic case). ing K f (r) in the upscaling procedure proposed
in [18], is illustrated in Figure 8. The transition
from a brittle to ductile behavior is well repre-
sented.

Constitutive behavior of the FRC composite

14
kf=0 (plain concrete)
Macroscopic stress [MPa]

12 kf=1E-2
10 kf=1E-1
kf=5E-1
8
6
4
2
0
Figure 7: Crack bridging effect obtained through integra- 0 0.001 0.002 0.003 0.004 0.005
tion of single fiber pullout responses (in different cases of Macroscopic strain [mm/mm]
orientation distribution).
Figure 8: Preliminary results the model: Different consti-
tutive behavior of the composite material containing dif-
3.2 Mechanical properties of the RVE ferent content of fiber (represented by the parameter k f ).

The composite behavior under further ten-

sile loading after the initiation of microc- The meso-scale model provides the overall
racks, i.e. whether those cracks grow quickly, mechanical behavior of the composite material

1356
 Yijian Zhan and Günther Meschke

generated in the form of a continuum constitu- By adopting the Embedded Crack formula-
tive law at the level of the RVE including an tion proposed in [22] and defining appropriate
ascending branch. Transition from distributed traction-sepration laws, the behavior of struc-
cracks to localized fracture is detected on the tures made of plain concrete can be simulated
basis of the localization tensor related to the (see Figure 9).
concrete-fiber composite material [21]. As soon
as the loss of ellipcity is signalled, the behav- 12
Plain concrete
ior is governed by the opening of a macro-crack 10
0.5% SFRC
which is represented by using the Embedded
Crack model. 8

Load P [kN]
6
4 Macro-scale: Embedded Crack model
4
The localization of deformation into macro-
cracks is represented on the level of Finite El- 2
ements by adopting the Embedded Crack ap-
0
proach [22, 23]. In this model, the scale tran- 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8
sition is accomplished by an additive decompo- Displacement U [mm]

sition of the displacement field u into a large Figure 10: Numerical simulation of the L-shape exper-
scale (continuous) portion ū and a discontinu- iment: Comparison of the results of plain concrete and
ous portion û, representing the local displace- FRC with low content of fiber.
ment jump:
Furthermore, by replacing the cohesive law
u(x) = ū(x) + û(x). (3)
on the crack interface with that obtained ac-
Since the element enrichment used for û is cording to the traction-separation law from the
restricted to the element domain, the addi- meso-scale analysis of the composite material,
tional parameters connected with the displace- the behavior of structures made of fiber rein-
ment jump are resolved by static condensation forced concrete can be simulated (Figure 10).
without introducing global degrees of freedom
5 Conclusions
[22, 24].
In this paper, the essential components of
a multi-scale oriented modeling framework for
the finite element analyses of steel fiber rein-
forced concrete materials and structures have
been presented. At the lowest level, the pullout
behavior in various cases of single steel fiber
embedded in concrete matrix is described by
analytical or numerical models. The models
have been successfully validated by means of
representative experimental results, capturing
the major mechanisms involved in the pullout of
single fibers. Then, the crack bridging law at the
level of an RVE of the composite material has
been obtained by means of integration over the
Figure 9: Numerical simulation of the L-shape exper- response of individual fibers distributed across
iment [25]: The computed load-displacement relation the crack. A modified fracture-micromechanics
compared with the experimental results and the plot of
model for the constitutive response of the RVE
crack pattern.
is proposed; a first testing example reveals the

1357
 Yijian Zhan and Günther Meschke

potential of this model. The crack bridging law fracture of fiber-reinforced concrete. Jour-
is used as the basis for a macroscopic represen- nal of Engineering Mechanics, 133(1):66–
tation of cracks on the level of Finite Elements 75, 2007.
using the Embedded Crack approach. A pre-
liminary structural simulation shows the perfor- [3] F.K.F. Radtke, A. Simone, and L.J. Sluys.
mance of the multiscale model. A partition of unity finite element method
The work presented so far is not yet the full for simulating non-linear debonding and
picture of the multiscale oriented scheme for the matrix failure in thin fibre composites. In-
modeling, simulation and optimization of FRC ternational Journal for Numerical Meth-
and hybrid RC-FRC materials to be used for ods in Engineering, 86:453–476, 2011.
large structures, e.g. tunnel linings. The steps
[4] P. Kabele. Multiscale framework for mod-
in progress and future work include
eling of fracture in high performance fiber
• the completion of the modified fracture- reinforced cementitious composites. Engi-
micromechanics model for the FRC com- neering Fracture Mechanics, 74:194–209,
posite behavior on the meso-scale, partic- 2007.
ularly the analysis of the strain-hardening
[5] P. Lawrence. Some theoretical considera-
phenomenon with correct modification
tions of fibre pull-out from an elastic ma-
on the stress intensity factor and the tran-
trix. Journal of Materials Science, 7:1–6,
sition from strain hardening to strain soft-
1972.
ening (localization) behavior in connec-
tion with the Embedded Crack model, [6] C.K.Y. Leung and N. Shapiro. Optimal
steel fiber strength for reinforcement of
• the implementation of the Embedded
cementitious materials. Journal of Mate-
Crack model in the 3-dimensional config-
rials in Civil Engineering, 11(2):116–123,
uration
1999.
• and the application of the complete mul-
[7] A.P. Fantilli and P. Vallini. A cohesive in-
tiscale framework to the analyses at the
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structural scale.
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6 Acknowledgement nal of Advanced Concrete Technology,
5(2):247–258, 2007.
Financial support was provided by the Ger-
man Research Foundation (DFG) in the frame- [8] Y. Zhan and G. Meschke. A multiscale
work of project B2 of the Collaborative Re- model for the finite element analysis of
search Center SFB 837. This support is grate- steel fiber reinforced concrete. In IASS-
fully acknowledged. IACM 2012: 7th International Conference
on Computational Mechanics for Spatial
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