Abstract
A method for simulating mass transfer in cracked concrete by means of a damage model and finite elements is proposed in this paper. The damage model, which is based on fracture mechanics for concrete with the modified von-Mises criterion, is applied to model crack propagations in concrete. The mass transfer in concrete is represented by the unsteady diffusion equation. The diffusivity coefficients in cracked concrete are modeled by using the damage variables obtained from the crack propagation analysis with the damage model. We first show the formulation of mechanical problem with the damage model and unsteady diffusion problem in consideration of the damage. Then, after verifying the mesh-dependency and mesh-objectivity of the proposed model, the numerical FE results are compared with the experimental results available in literatures to demonstrate the validity of the proposed method.
