Upscaling the elastic stiffness of foam concrete
Recently scientists upscaled the elastic stiffness of foam concrete as a three-phase composite material.
The stiffness of foam concrete depends primarily on the added porosity. Nevertheless, by performing 3D elastic numerical simulations on artificial unit cells in the frame of periodic homogenisation, it is shown that describing foam concrete as a porous material is not sufficient to explain the experimental measurements of the Young modulus for added porosity higher than 40%.
Accurate estimates of the Young modulus
Indeed, introducing sand as a third phase enables to recover accurate estimates of the Young modulus. Furthermore, for highly porous concrete foams, it is shown that the stress concentrates in thin members deprived of stiff sand particles, thus leading to a softer overall stiffness.
The study is published in: Cement and Concrete Research Volume 110, August 2018, Pages 13-23.
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