3D meso-mechanical modeling of concrete spall tests

•A new 3D meso-mechanical model has been developed.•The difficulty of simulating the very thin ITZ layer is overcome.•The newly developed 3D meso-mechanical model can be used to simulate large scale concrete structures.•The numerical results are in good agreement with the data for concrete spall tests.•The developed model can reproduce the experimental phenomenon observed in the spall test.

Numerical simulation of concrete spall tests is carried out in this paper by means of a 3D meso-mechanical model. The model is developed by assuming that concrete can be considered as a three-phase material containing cement mortar, aggregates and interfacial transition zone (ITZ) and the difficulty of simulating the very thin ITZ layer is overcome by employing element reconstruction technique (ERT) which results in great improvement for the computational efficiency. It transpires that the present numerical simulation results are in good agreement with the data obtained for the spall tests of concrete in terms of failure pattern, strain and dynamic tensile strength. It also transpires that the present model can reproduce the experimentally observed phenomenon that the amplitude of reflected tensile wave increases with increasing propagation distance which is caused largely by damage growth in concrete materials.