Structured Project 2: Multiscale analysis of fracture and damage
Coordinated by Julien Yvonnet (MSME)
Cracks play a crucial role in construction materials. They can occur during the manufacturing process or be induced by service or environmental conditions. Besides the risk related to structural integrity, cracks can also strongly affect other properties such as thermal or acoustic insulation properties or permeability. Understanding, modeling and simulating crack phenomena in building materials is a difficult task given the complexity and variability of microstructures, and the complex multiphysics phenomena occurring (mechanical loads, chemical reactions, transport, presence of fluids) that can cause and affect the creation of cracks. Another problem is related to the scales considered in construction structures: cracks can appear at small scales (of the order of microns) and affect the properties at the scale of the whole structure (of the order meter). Another difficult task is then to develop multi-scale approaches, combining modeling, numerical simulations and advanced experiments, to predict the influence of micro cracks on the whole structure (macro-scale).
The objectives of this project include:
(1) The development of modeling and experimental techniques to describe fracture mechanisms in construction materials during manufacturing or service conditions.
(2) The modeling of small-scale cracks in complex or innovative construction materials and their impact on behavior on a larger scale.
(3) The development of approaches combining numerical simulations and experiments to identify fracture or damage behaviors in complex microstructures.
(4) The identification of the mechanisms allowing an optimization of the mechanical resistance or of any property that can be degraded by cracks (permeability, thermal or acoustic insulation, limitation of the swelling of the clay, etc.), for the design of new Construction materials.
Achieved projects
Fig. 1: Multiscale modeling of fracture in cementitious materias: combined experimental/imaging/simulations (PhD thesis Than Thung Nguyen)
Fig. 2: Numerical modeling of hydraulic fracture in heterogeneous media using Phase field methof (Post-doc Lia Xiang )
Fig. 3: Fracture modeling using molecular simulations (Post-doc Ignacio Tejada)
Fig. 4: Atomistic instabilities at the origin of failure initiation (PhD Thesis Sabri Soughir)
Fig. 5: Thermo-hydro-mechanical behavior and evolution of carbonated rocks microstructures under high temperatures and high pressures: applications to geothermics (PhD thesis Youssous Abdallah)
Fig. 6: Cracks and desiccation in clay materials: modeling, simulation and stochastic aspects (PhD Darith Anthony Hun)
Fig. 7: Experimental study of desiccation cracking in clay soils (Post-doc Abdellali Dadda)
Fig. 8: Modeling cracks at the micro scale in heterogeneous porous materials under hydromechanical constraints by JFEM method and debounding interface models (PhD Vinh Hoang Tan Le)
Ongoing project
Hydric fracture in clay soil used in eco-construction: experimental analysis by 3D imaging and numerical modeling (Post-doc Wenqiang ZUO)
List of advisors in achieved funded projects
Michel Bornert (NAVIER), Sébastien Brisard (NAVIER), Laurent Brochard (NAVIER), Eric Cances (CERMICS), Camille Chateau (NAVIER), Siavash Ghabezloo (NAVIER), Frédéric Legoll (CERMICS), Tony Lelièvre (CERMICS), Amade Pouya (NAVIER), Karam Sab (NAVIER), Ioannis Stefanou (NAVIER), Gabriel Stoltz (CERMICS), Jean Sulem (NAVIER), Anh Minh Tang (NAVIER), Julien Yvonnet (MSME)
Events
Workshop on fracture multiscale modeling and experiments (March 29, 2021)