SPP 2020:  Cyclic deterioration of High-Performance Concrete in an experimental-virtual lab

• Subject Area: Construction Engineering and Architecture
• Term: since 2017
• Website: Homepage
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 313829475

Extensive advances in concrete technology have led to the development of high performance concretes with significantly expanded application possibilities. Examples include self-compacting, high-strength and ultra-high-strength concretes with steel-like strengths or fiber-reinforced and textile-reinforced concretes with highly ductile behavior. These concretes allow very slender, aesthetic and resource efficient concrete structures, which are more susceptible to vibration due to their reduced weight. Even outside of the classical construction industry, the range of applications for high-performance concretes will undergo considerable development, for example in mechanical and plant engineering, where they can become an alternative to metallic and ceramic materials. All of these structures are subjected to highly cyclical loading, so that the fatigue behavior is crucial for their design and thus for the feasibility of innovative concrete applications. However, there is any basic knowledge of material degradation of concrete under fatigue stress hardly available. Because of these gaps in knowledge, the use of modern high-performance concretes is already considerably hindered, sometimes even prevented.The designed aim of this priority program is to capture, understand, describe, model and predict the material degradation of high-performance concretes using the newest experimental and virtual numerical methods. Since the damage processes occur on a very small scale, they cannot be entirely observed during the load tests. The recording of suitable damage indicators during the experiments make the time-consuming fatigue tests already very demanding. To this extent, the desired results will be developed from a close cooperation between the building material science and the computational mechanics knowledge, which is the interconnection of experiment and computation in the Experimental-Virtual-Lab.An SPP is the perfect framework to resolve the pressing issues of material degradation across locations. The collaboration is designed in such a way that in addition to an intensive exchange of experimental techniques, damage indicators and modeling approaches, a multiple use of the experimental data and a close interaction between experiment and simulation is achieved. Due to the complex experimental technique and the necessity of a fundamental further development of material models, a strong cooperation of the participating locations is promoted with special structural arrangements. Only in this way the existing barriers to the use of fatigue-stressed high-performance concretes can be overcome and an innovation boost for building with concrete and for concrete applications outside of the classical construction industry can be triggered. The new knowledge will also enable to extend the service life of existing fatigue-stressed structures such as bridges and wind turbines.

• DFG Programme: Priority Programmes
• International Connection: Switzerland, USA

Projects

• Coordination Funds (Applicant Lohaus, Ludger )
• Damage Processes in Ultra-High Performance Fiber-Reinforced Concrete Under Cyclic Tensile Loading (Applicants Dinkler, Dieter ;  Empelmann, Martin )
• Effects of Steel-fibers on the Degradation of High-Performance Concrete subjected to Fatigue Loading - Testing and Modeling (Applicants Anders, Steffen ;  Brands, Dominik ;  Schröder, Jörg )
• Enhancement of fatigue resistance of strain-hardening cement-based composites by means of experimental-virtual multiscale material design (Applicants Kaliske, Michael ;  Mechtcherine, Viktor )
• Experimental and numerical framework for characterization of high-strength concrete fatigue accounting for local dissipative mechanisms at subcritical load levels (Applicants Chudoba, Rostislav ;  Claßen, Martin )
• High resolution electron microscopy of fatigue behavior in high performance concrete and multiscale modelling using a bonded particle model (Applicants Ritter, Martin ;  Schmidt-Döhl, Frank )
• Influence of load-induced temperature fields on the fatigue behaviour of UHPC subjected to high frequency compression loading (Applicants Scheerer, Silke ;  Tran, Ngoc Linh )
• Influence of microfibers on the degradation of high performance concrete under cyclic loading (Applicants Breitenbücher, Rolf ;  Meschke, Günther )
• Material composition influenced damage development in high-strength concrete under cyclic loading (Applicants Löhnert, Stefan ;  Oneschkow, Nadja )
• Multiscale investigation of fatigue crack growth in high performance concrete based on computer tomography and phase-field fracture modeling (Applicants Leusmann, Thorsten ;  De Lorenzis, Laura )
• Multiscale modelling of the degradation progress in the localised fracture zone of carbon fibre reinforced high-performance concrete subjected to high-cycle tension and flexural tension fatigue loading - phase 2: damage accumulation and degradation prediction (Applicants Fischer, Oliver ;  Große, Christian ;  Peter, Malte Andreas ;  Volkmer, Dirk )
• Temperature- and humidity-induced damage processes caused by multi-axial cyclic loading (Applicants Garrecht, Harald ;  Steeb, Holger )
• Visualisation and micromechanical modelling of internal damage processes due to cyclically loaded high performance concretes, with emphasis on the hygral and thermal boundary conditions (Applicants Dehn, Frank ;  Koenders, Ph.D., Eduardus ;  Pahn, Matthias )
• Water-induced damage mechanisms of cyclic loaded high-performance concretes (Applicants Haist, Michael ;  Lohaus, Ludger ;  Wriggers, Peter )

• Spokesperson: Professor Dr.-Ing. Ludger Lohaus