Micromechanical investigation on size effect of tensile strength for recycled aggregate concrete using BFEM

In this paper, the validity and performance of base force element method (BFEM) based on potential energy principle was studied by some numerical examples. And the BFEM on damage mechanics is used to analyze the size effect on tensile strength for recycled aggregate concrete (RAC) at meso-level. The recycled aggregate concrete is taken as five-phase composites consisting of natural coarse aggregate, new mortar, new interfacial transition zone (ITZ), old mortar and old ITZ on meso-level. The random aggregate model is used to simulate the meso-structure of recycled aggregate concrete. The size effects of mechanical properties of RAC under uniaxial tensile loading are simulated using the BFEM on damage mechanics. The simulation results agree with the test results. This analysis method is the new way for investigating fracture mechanism and numerical simulation of mechanical properties for RAC.