3D mesoscale structural analysis of cracking behavior in RC structures caused by soundless chemical demolition agents

This research is a fundamental study on the cracking behavior of RC structures using Soundless Chemical Demolition Agent (SCDA) with an analytical technique, which aims to improve the demolition of RC structures. The reproducibility of primary crack propagation direction in 3D-RBSM analysis was verified using the information from the past research, both large RC slabs and small plain concrete specimens. Then, the analysis was extended to study the effects of SCDA’s application details and stirrup based on the small RC specimens (200 ×200 ×500 mm 3 prism models with 4D20). Fundamentally, it can be visually observed that stirrups in the specimens limit the propagation of the primary cracks but increase of SCDA injections into adjacent stirrups’ span, enforcing the connection of cracks between SCDAs over stirrups with the verification of experiment. Therefore, a certain effect of SCDA numbers on crack propagation was confirmed. On the other hand, crack width distribution was quantified by the analysis, which indicates that the ratio of fine cracks with the width of less than 0.3 mm increase due to the stirrups. Therefore, it can be confirmed that the use of stirrup quantitatively restricts a crack enlargement by SCDAs.