Multi-scale damage analysis for concrete using the Scaled Boundary Finite Element Method with High-Performance-Computing

Concrete exhibits complex fracture behaviors, making accurate simulation and analysis essential for understanding material damage mechanisms.This study presents a numerical approach utilizing the novel Scaled Boundary Finite Element Method (SBFEM) to simulate the damage in concrete.The SBFEM is a semi-analytical method capable of using polyhedral elements with arbitrary number of nodes, edges and faces, which is highly complementary with efficient octree mesh generation algorithms.Therefore, octree meshes can be generated directly from the digital scan images of concrete samples, which capture material heterogeneity with high fidelity.Furthermore, the computational demands of damage simulation, especially in multi-scale problems, are addressed by leveraging modern High-Performance-Computing (HPC) techniques.The problem domain is partitioned into a number of parts with similar size which are distributed to multiple computational units.The partition scheme is designed to minimize the data communication between parts, therefore maximizing the computational efficiency.By combining the SBFEM with HPC, this approach is particularly well-suited for simulating concrete's fracture processes, enabling efficient modeling of damage initiation, propagation, and coalescence in complex geometries.Several numerical examples are presented in this work, demonstrating the accuracy and computational efficiency of the proposed approach.This study provides a robust tool for researchers and engineers to address the challenges of damage mechanics in concrete structures.