Multi-scale modeling and trans-level simulation from material meso-damage to structural failure of reinforced concrete frame structures under seismic loading

• A method is developed to simulate trans-scale seismic failure process of RC frame.
• Damage process across from material, component and structural level can be simulated.
• Adaptivity makes the method more effective.
• The simulated results fit well with the experiment.

An adaptive concurrent multi-scale method with three-level model is developed to simulate the trans-scale damage process of large concrete structures from meso-damage in material level to local damage and failure in component level and eventually to global deterioration in structural level. Adaptivity ensures level-change due to evolving damage for better effective without user intervention in the computation. To verify the effectiveness of the method, the trans-scale process of a RC (reinforced concrete) frame structure under seismic loading from meso-damage up to structural failure is simulated and compared with experiment. The results show that, the developed method can be used to reveal the seismic mechanisms of concrete structures by considering the trans-level coupling process from meso-damage to local failure in vulnerable component and eventually to structural failure in a concurrent way; and it is reliable in simulation on the seismic performance of large scale concrete-based structures with the adaptive capability as well as better computational efficiency for seismic risk mitigation plans.