Research on Macroscopic Mechanical Behavior of Recycled Aggregate Concrete Based on Mesoscale

Abstract

Recycled concrete is a heterogeneous composite material, and the composition and volume fraction of each phase affect its macroscopic properties. In this paper, ANSYS APDL was used to construct a two-dimensional numerical model of recycled aggregate concrete with different replacement rates of recycled aggregate (0%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 100%), and a uniaxial compression test was carried out to explore the relationship between recycled aggregate content and its macroscopic mechanical behavior. On this basis, the numerical simulation of different strain rates (0.1 s−1, 0.05 s−1, 0.01 s−1, 0.005 s−1 and 0.001 s−1) was carried out. It was found that with the increase in the recycled aggregate replacement rate, the peak stress decreases first and then increases, and the peak strain increases continuously. When the replacement rate of recycled aggregate exceeds 50%, the overall damage area of the material increases rapidly. The strain rate will change the path of the micro-crack initiation and expansion of recycled concrete, as well as the process of damage accumulation and evolution. As a result, the unit area and shape of recycled concrete are different at different strain rates, and the damage degree of each phase material is also different.

Keywords

• recycled concrete
• regenerated aggregate replacement rate
• strain rate
• mesoscopic damage evolution
• macroscopic performance