Generation and property analyses of 3D mesoscale models for plain and fiber reinforced concretes

Abstract Model construction is a key and indispensable step to understand the internal structure of concrete at the micro-/mesoscale level, which affects its properties in practice. In this paper, a practical and applicable method is proposed for generating the mesoscale structure of plain and fiber reinforced concretes. In this method, cell fracture algorithm was developed to obtain arbitrary-shaped aggregates, Surface subdivision (Catmull–Clark subdivision algorithm), Displacement mapping and Laplace smoothing algorithm were developed to constructed rough surface of realistic aggregates. Random algorithm was used to generate fibers, the interactions between aggregates and fibers were detected and solved by collision algorithm. The influence of shape, size and volume fractions of aggregate, together with fiber's orientation on the structure and properties of plain and fiber reinforced concrete were studied. Compared with experimental data and previous works, the proposed models can well predict the volume fraction of the interfacial transition zone (ITZ) and the elastic modulus of plain and fiber reinforced concretes. This paper provides a promising tool for numerical and analytical research of plain and fiber reinforced concretes.