Project Title: A self-contained element to model crack development in beams and slabs

Objective/Abstract

Crack development in concrete slabs due to vehicular loading and curling is of significant interest to pavement engineering. However, most pavement design methods and tools do not directly model crack development, using damage mechanics or fatigue theory instead. The present study developed a self-contained element that modeled cracks with a non-linear Cohesive Zone Model (CZM) that could be used with any Finite Element (FE) program, but is especially suited for beam- and slab-based pavement design programs such as ISLAB.

Equipment/Materials Used

Computational (code is in FORTRAN, postprocessing with Python).

Principal Investigator(s)

Dr. Lev Khazanovich

Sponsors and Collaborators

Anthony Gill Chair funds

Current Postdoc(s)

Dr. Sushobhan Sen

Key Findings

• Crack development in beams can be modeled by inserting continuum elements only in the vicinity of the crack of a length equal to that of the thickness of the beam.
• A self-contained element significantly reduces the computational effort required. 
• The strength of a beam in flexure was shown to depend on its size, approximately in a linear fashion.

Potential Impact

This project will enable elastic rigid pavement design models to easily incorporate non-linear cohesive zone models for crack propagation, reducing the need for empirical transfer functions to model distresses from cracking. This will potentially lead to more accurate pavement designs.

Buzzwords

-pavement distresses