Construction and Building Materials 288 (2021) 123110

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Construction and Building Materials

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/conbuildmat

Experimental and numerical research on triaxial mechanical behavior

of self-compacting concrete subjected to freeze–thaw damage
Xiangyi Zhu a, Xudong Chen a,⇑, Nan Zhang b, Xinquan Wang c,⇑, Hongguo Diao c
a
College of Civil and Transportation Engineering, Hohai University, Nanjing 210098, China
b
PLA Army Engineering University, Xuzhou 221004, China
c
Zhejiang University City College, Hangzhou 310015, China

h i g h l i g h t s

1. Different freeze–thaw cycle tests were carried out on self-compacting concrete.

2. Effect of different FT damage on the triaxial behavior of the concrete was studied.
3D

3. The PFC model considering the real aggregates can describe the triaxial behavior.

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Considering that freeze–thaw (FT) damage has a serious degradation effect on the performance of con-
Received 22 November 2020 crete materials in cold regions and constraint is a common boundary condition for concrete structures,
Received in revised form 6 March 2021 the main mechanical behaviors of self-compacting concrete subjected to 0, 50, 100, 150, 200 and 250
Accepted 16 March 2021
FT cycles under different confining pressures (0, 2.5, 5 and 10 MPa) are studied through a series of triaxial
Available online 30 March 2021
compression tests. The results show that the macroscopic fracture of concrete under triaxial loads grad-
ually propagates towards the direction of axial compression with the increase of FT cycles, and it changes
Keywords:
from one fracture to multiple fractures; the peak deviator stress, elastic modulus, and strain correspond-
Freeze-thaw damage
Triaxial compression test
ing to peak deviator stress increase with the increase of confining pressure. In addition, with the increase
Computed tomography scanning of FT cycles, the FT damage weakens the peak deviator stress and lateral deformation capacity of con-
Real aggregate shape crete, resulting in its sensitivity to confining pressure gradually increases, and the cohesion cn and inter-
Numerical prediction model nal friction angle un decrease exponentially. Finally, based on the experimental research, the influence
indexes of FT damage are introduced into the mesoscopic parameters, and a discrete element model con-
sidering the real aggregate shape is established to predict the triaxial mechanical behavior of self-
compacting concrete subjected to different FT cycles under different confining pressures.
Ó 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
The FT failure of concrete structures is one of the most impor-
tant durability problems in many cold regions of the world, such
as hydraulic structures, bridge piers, etc. [1–3]. The FT damage is
due to the volume expansion of 9% when the pore water inside
the concrete freezes, resulting in the crystallization pressure acting
on the pore or capillary wall [4,5]. In addition, during the FT pro-
cess, cold water will migrate through the pores, resulting in the
hydraulic pore pressure and cryosuction pressure acting on the
pore wall [6]. These three kinds of pressures appear in the process
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: cxdong1985@hotmail.com (X. Chen), wangxq@zucc.edu.cn (X.
Wang).
of freezing and disappear in the process of thawing, and thus peri-
odically cause micro-cracks around the pore walls and gradually
expand, resulting in a decrease in the strength, stiffness and elastic
modulus of concrete [7]. Therefore, FT damage can be regarded as a
complex process of fatigue crack propagation, which may threaten
the durability and safety of concrete structures, so researchers and
engineers pay great attention to it. By studying the thermodynamic
coexistence conditions of solid, liquid and gas phases of pore
water, Setzer [8], Scherer [9,10] and Bresme [11] pointed out that
FT failure was inevitable. Gong et al. [12] believed that the porous
framework would be significantly damaged due to the action of
various pore pressures during the freezing process of pore water
inside the concrete. Moreover, the internal damage would accumu-
late with the increase of FT cycles, resulting in the gradual degra-
dation of material properties. Hence, it is of great significance to

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2021.123110
0950-0618/Ó 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
X. Zhu, X. Chen, N. Zhang et al. Construction and Building Materials 288 (2021) 123110

study the degradation of concrete mechanical properties under FT damage is quantitatively characterized by relative mass loss and
cycles for the safe operation of concrete engineering. normalized dynamic elastic modulus. Then the main mechanical
Meanwhile, triaxial stress states exist in many places of con- behaviors of self-compacting concrete subjected to different FT
crete structures, such as dams, offshore platforms, bridge piers, damage under confining pressures of 0, 2.5, 5 and 10 MPa are stud-
etc. [13,14]. These multiaxial loads are usually caused by hydro- ied through a series of triaxial compression tests. Finally, the influ-
static pressure, soil pressure and boundary constraint acting inde- ence indexes of FT damage (the attenuation law of triaxial strength,
pendently or simultaneously, which have a significant influence on elastic modulus, cohesion and internal friction angle) are intro-
the mechanical properties of concrete. Hence, the research on the duced into the mesoscopic parameters, and the PFC3D model con-
mechanical properties of concrete under triaxial loads has become sidering the real aggregate shape is established, which can
the focus of structural stability analysis. Imran [15] and Mahboubi effectively reproduce the triaxial mechanical behavior of self-
[16] reported that with the increase of confining pressure, the tri- compacting concrete subjected to different FT cycles under differ-
axial peak stress of plain concrete increased significantly, and the ent confining pressures.
transition from brittle fracture to ductile fracture could be
observed. Chen et al. [17,18] carried out experimental research
2. Experimental program
and model construction on normal concrete under four confining
pressures of 0, 5, 10 and 20 MPa, and considered that confining
2.1. Materials
pressure could significantly improve the failure strength and plas-
tic deformation of concrete. Zhou et al. [19] established the consti-
The raw materials and dosage used for casting the self-compacting
tutive model for coral aggregate concrete under uniaxial and
concrete specimens are shown in Table 1. The raw materials used
triaxial compression conditions, and found that high confining
in the test include: (a) The PO 42.5 ordinary Portland cement
pressure inhibited the rapid propagation of internal cracks, result-
produced by Ma’anshan Conch Cement Plant, with a density of
ing in greater stiffness and triaxial strength. In addition, a large
3150 kg/m3 and alkali content no more than 0.60%; (b) The coarse
number of researchers have conducted triaxial tests on different
aggregate is crushed limestone (the particle size ranges from 5 to
types of concrete, such as high-strength concrete [20,21] and
19 mm with continuous grading), and the fine aggregate is river
fiber-reinforced concrete [22,23], as well as the influence of envi-
sand, which is mainly composed of quartz and dolomite by X-ray
ronmental factors such as chemical corrosion [24]. Therefore, it is
diffraction (XRD) analysis (see Fig. 1). The physical performance
of great value for practical engineering to study the influence of
indexes are shown in Table 2; (c) Silica fume and Class F fly ash;
FT cycles on the main triaxial behavior of self-compacting concrete.
(d) The polycarboxylate superplasticizer produced by Nanjing Reddy
However, previous researches about the effect of FT damage on
Materials Co., Ltd. has a solid content of 30% and a water reduction
concrete performance mainly focused on the relative dynamic elas-
rate of 35%. The water-cement ratio used in the test is 0.519.
tic modulus, mass loss and porosity [25,26], while the research on
The slump flow and the J-ring flow of self-compacting concrete are
the performance of concrete under the combined action of FT dam-
705 mm and 690 mm respectively.
age and triaxial loads were relatively limited, so it is necessary to
conduct the in-depth discussion.
With the development of computer technology, numerical sim- 2.2. Test program
ulation provides a new method for concrete mechanical analysis.
This method can overcome the disadvantages of the test, save In this study, self-compacting concrete specimens with a diam-
the waste of resources and time consumption, and can monitor eter of 50 mm and a height of 100 mm were cast. All specimens
the development of internal cracks inside the concrete in real-
Table 1
time and identify whether the cracks are caused by tensile failure Mixture proportions of self-compacting concrete (kg/m3).
or shear failure. Hence, it has attracted great attention from aca-
demic circles. However, due to the complex constitutive behavior, Cement Water Fly Silica Coarse Fine Superplasticizer
ash fume aggregate aggregate
it is difficult to accurately characterize the large-scale cracking of
concrete from the perspective of continuum formulation [27]. As 385 200 139 26 800 1018 7.5

an effective discrete element method (DEM), PFC3D has been

widely used in the study of concrete failure mechanisms due to
its ability to calculate the development of internal cracks based
on discontinuous characteristics, which can overcome the short-
comings of the finite element method (FEM). Song et al. [28] estab-
lished the PFC3D numerical model to reproduce the main
mechanical behavior of concrete specimens under multi-stage cyc-
lic loading. Ren et al. [29] established a PFC3D numerical model
based on an improved parallel-bond constitutive model, and found
that this numerical model could accurately simulate the tensile
and compressive failure process of concrete. Sinaie [30] used
DEM to discuss the effect of size effect on the mechanical proper-
ties of concrete, and the numerical model effectively reproduced
the effect of the ratio of height to width on the compressive prop-
erties of concrete. However, the above researches are to simplify
the irregular aggregate into a sphere without considering the real
aggregate shape, so the numerical model needs to be improved.
In addition, it is still a challenge to study the failure mechanism
of concrete under triaxial loads by introducing FT damage into
mesoscopic parameters to establish a triaxial compression model.
In this paper, 0, 50, 100, 150, 200 and 250 FT cycle tests are car-
ried out on self-compacting concrete firstly, and the degree of FT Fig. 1. Mineral composition of river sand.

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X. Zhu, X. Chen, N. Zhang et al. Construction and Building Materials 288 (2021) 123110

Table 2 crete” [32], the relative mass loss (RML) and normalized dynamic
Physical property parameters of the aggregates. elastic modulus (NDEM) were calculated by Eqs. (1) and (2)
Aggregate Apparent Bulk Crushing Fineness respectively.
type density density value (%) modulus
(kg/m3) (kg/m3)
m0  mn
Dmn ¼  100% ð1Þ
m0
Fine aggregate 2600 1487 / 2.6
Coarse aggregate 2650 1520 8.27 /
where m0 is the mass of concrete specimens before FT cycles (g); mn
is the mass of concrete specimens after n FT cycles (g).

were demolded after casting for 24 h, and cured in a saturated
environment for 28 d. Subsequently, the specimens were divided
into 6 groups, and 0, 50, 100, 150, 200 and 250 FT cycle tests were
carried out respectively. Each group consists of 9 specimens, a total
of 54. The central temperature of the specimens was controlled
from 20 ℃ to +7 ℃, and one FT cycle lasted for 4 h. After the
set FT cycles, the specimens were taken out from the FT cycle
device and the water on the surface was wiped (as shown in
Fig. 2). Then the mass and dynamic elastic modulus of the speci-
mens were measured in turn. According to ASTM C666/C666M-
15 ‘‘Standard test method for resistance of concrete to rapid freez-
ing and thawing” [31] and GB/T 50082-2009 ‘‘Standard for test
methods of long-term performance and durability of ordinary con-
En
DEn ¼ ð2Þ
E0
where E0 is the dynamic elastic modulus of concrete specimens
before FT cycles (GPa); En is the dynamic elastic modulus of con-
crete specimens after n FT cycles (GPa).
Finally, the triaxial system of TOP INDUSTRIE (France) (as
shown in Fig. 3(a)) was used to conduct triaxial compression tests
on concrete specimens after different FT cycles, and the loading
mode could be freely switched between displacement control
and stress control. During the triaxial test, hydrostatic pressure
was first applied to the concrete specimen at an incremental rate
of 0.067 MPa/s. Once the target confining pressure was reached,
the confining pressure was kept constant by the oil pressure con-
trol system. Then, the axial pressure was applied by displacement
control with a loading rate of 0.5 lm/s (i.e. 5  106/s) until the
concrete specimen failed. Meanwhile, two linear variable differen-
tial transformers (LVDTs) and a radial strain gauge (RSG) were used
to measure the axial and radial strains respectively, as shown in
Fig. 3(b). To study the influence of confining pressure on the triax-
ial mechanical properties of concrete, four confining pressures (0,
2.5, 5 and 10 MPa) were set for triaxial compression tests and
two specimens were repeated for each condition.

3. Experimental results and discussion

3.1. FT cycle test

The relative mass loss (RML) and normalized dynamic elastic

modulus (NDEM) of concrete specimens subjected to 0, 50, 100,
150, 200 and 250 FT cycles are shown in Fig. 4. It can be seen from
the figure that the RML presents a two-stage characteristic with
the increase of FT cycles [33,34]. Before 150 FT cycles, the mass loss
of concrete is slow, which is less than 0.2% of the initial mass. How-
Fig. 2. Concrete specimens after different FT cycles.
ever, after 150 FT cycles, the mass loss is obviously accelerated and

Fig. 3. The triaxial system of TOP INDUSTRIE (France).

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the surface scaling is serious. This is mainly due to the continuous

Fig. 4. The trend of RML and NDEM with FT cycles.
freezing and melting of pore water inside the concrete, which will
cause obvious fatigue damage to the porous skeleton [35]. More-
over, the internal damage will accumulate with the increase of
FT cycles. When certain FT cycles are reached, a large number of
layered shedding occurs on the concrete surface, resulting in a
sharp increase in mass loss [36]. Meanwhile, the dynamic elastic
modulus decreases with the increase of FT cycles, which is related
to the integrity of the concrete. When the number of micro-cracks
in concrete increases, the acoustic wave will reflect, refract, diffract
and scatter through these micro-cracks, which will reduce the
measured dynamic elastic modulus. Therefore, the dynamic elastic
modulus decreases with the increase of FT cycles, which indirectly
proves the initiation of micro-cracks in concrete. Furthermore, the
NDEM of self-compacting concrete only decreases by 0.14 when
the FT cycles reach 250; for ordinary concrete [37], the NDEM
has decreased by 0.38 after only 100 FT cycles, which indicates that
the self-compacting concrete cast in this paper has stronger frost
resistance than ordinary concrete.

Fig. 5. Failure mode of self-compacting concrete subjected to different FT cycles under confining pressure of 2.5 MPa.

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Fig. 6. Triaxial stress–strain curves of self-compacting concrete subjected to different FT cycles.

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X. Zhu, X. Chen, N. Zhang et al.
3.2. Triaxial compression test
3.2.1. Failure mode
Fig. 5 shows the failure modes of self-compacting concrete sub-
jected to different FT damage under triaxial compression. It can be
concluded that the FT damage has a great influence on the crack
development of concrete under triaxial compression. When the
number of FT cycles is 0, the concrete specimen shows obvious
shear failure, and a diagonal macroscopic fracture develops obvi-
ously, as shown in Fig. 5(a). However, with the aggravation of
freeze–thaw damage, the number of micro-cracks in concrete
increases and the strength decreases, resulting in the propagation
of the macroscopic fracture towards the direction of axial compres-
sion, and the shear failure is weakened, as shown in Fig. 5(b) and 5
(c). When the number of FT cycles reaches 150, the internal dam-
age of concrete is further aggravated, which destroys the internal
structure of concrete and generates a large number of micro-
cracks. This leads to the development of secondary fractures along
with the main fracture, that is, the main fracture begins to diverge,
as shown in Fig. 5(d). This stage is consistent with the rapid growth
point of RML in Fig. 4. With the continuous accumulation of FT
damage, the internal micro-cracks of concrete develop rapidly,
and the strength further decreases. When the concrete is subjected
to triaxial loads, the internal micro-cracks expand and connect into
multiple main fractures, and the shear failure is further weakened,
mainly manifested as compression failure, as shown in Fig. 5(e)
and 5(f).
3.2.2. Triaxial compressive stress–strain behavior of concrete subjected
to different FT cycles
The constraint is a common boundary condition in practical
engineering, which greatly improves the mechanical response of
concrete. Therefore, it is necessary to study the variation law of
deformation and failure strength of concrete subjected to different
FT damage under confining pressure. In order to characterize the
triaxial mechanical properties of self-compacting concrete sub-
jected to different FT damage, triaxial compression tests with dif-
ferent confining pressures are carried out. According to previous
literature [38-40], the point where an increase in the last 0.5%
strain (e1) does not produce any significant decrease in strength
(2 MPa) is defined as the end point of each triaxial test, and the
stress–strain curves are shown in Fig. 6(a–f).
Fig. 7. Influence of FT damage on peak deviatoric stress under different confining
pressures.
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Construction and Building Materials 288 (2021) 123110
It can be seen from Fig. 6 that the peak deviatoric stress (r1-r3)
and elastic modulus of concrete both increase with the increase of
confining pressure. Meanwhile, the strain (including axial strain e1
and radial strain e3) corresponding to the peak deviator stress also
increases with the increase of confining pressure, which indicates
that confining pressure improves the ductility of concrete and
enhances the ability of concrete to resist deformation. This is
because the confining pressure restricts the initiation and combi-
nation of micro-cracks, and the mechanical properties of concrete
are significantly improved. In addition, it can be concluded from
Fig. 7 that the sensitivity of concrete to confining pressure
increases with the increase of FT cycles. When the number of FT
cycles is 0, the confining pressure increases from 0 MPa to
10 MPa, and the peak deviator stress of concrete rises from
76.1 MPa to 145.3 MPa, increasing by 90.9%. However, when the
number of FT cycles are 50, 100, 150, 200 and 250, the confining
pressure increases from 0 MPa to 10 MPa, and the peak deviator
stress of concrete increases by 95.3%, 102.4%, 114.3%, 122.0% and
128.3%, respectively. This is because the expansion stress caused
by the freezing of pore water inside concrete acts on the pore or
capillary wall, which will cause obvious damage to the porous
skeleton, and this internal damage will accumulate with the
increase of FT cycles, resulting in the degradation of material prop-
erties and the increase of porosity [4], which reduces the triaxial
strength of concrete. The greater the porosity of concrete is, the
more susceptible it is to confining pressure, and the more sensitive
the peak deviator stress is to confining pressure [41].
Moreover, the radial residual strain of concrete decreases with
the increase of freeze–thaw cycles when the confining pressure is
constant. Taking r3 = 2.5 MPa as the example, the radial residual
strain is 3.4% for 0 FT cycles, 3.1% for 50 FT cycles, 2.8% for
100 FT cycles, 2.7% for 150 FT cycles, 2.3% for 200 FT cycles
and 2.2% for 250 FT cycles. The circumferential strain reflects
the lateral expansion characteristics of concrete. This shows that
FT damage destroys the internal structure of concrete, increases
the number of internal micro-cracks, weakens the lateral deforma-
tion capacity, and makes the concrete transition from ductility to
brittleness.
3.2.3. Cohesion cn and internal friction angle un of concrete subjected
to different FT cycles
Mohr-coulomb failure criterion is a classical failure criterion to
describe the failure envelope and is widely used because of its sim-
plicity and accuracy [42-44]. Hence, based on the Moor-Coulomb
model, a triaxial failure model considering FT cycles is established
in this paper, as shown in the following formula:
r1  r3 r1 þ r3
¼ sinun þ cn cosun ð3Þ
2 2
where r1 is the maximum principal stress of concrete after n FT
cycles; r3 is the confining pressure; cn and un are the cohesion
and internal friction angle of concrete after n FT cycles, respectively.
By mathematical transformation of Eq. (3), it can be obtained
that:
Y ¼ X  sinun þ cn cosun ð4Þ
where Y ¼ r1 2 r3 and X ¼ r1 þ2 r3 .
According to the triaxial test results of concrete subjected to dif-
ferent FT cycles under four confining pressures (0, 2.5, 5 and
10 MPa), cn and un are determined by linear regression. The fitting
curves and relevant fitting parameters are shown in Fig. 8 and
Table 3 respectively. By the linear regression analysis, all the linear
fitting degrees (R2) are greater than 0.98, which shows that cn and
un of concrete subjected to different FT cycles can be accurately
obtained by using the Mohr-coulomb failure criterion.
X. Zhu, X. Chen, N. Zhang et al. Construction and Building Materials 288 (2021) 123110

Fig. 8. Determination of cn and un of self-compacting concrete subjected to different FT cycles.

The cohesion cn and internal friction angle un determined increase of FT cycles. Compared with the concrete without FT dam-
according to the linear fitting results are also listed in Table 3. It age, the cohesion and internal friction angle of concrete subjected
can be concluded that cn and un decrease significantly with the to 250 FT cycles are reduced by 49.8% and 18.2%, respectively. The
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Table 3
The results of the linear regression for the Mohr-Coulomb criterion.

Parameters Number of FT cycles

0 50 100 150 200 250
Slope (sinun) 0.7836 0.7695 0.7520 0.7290 0.7025 0.6717
Intercept (cncosun) 10.2334 9.9208 9.3570 8.5015 7.4520 6.1203
Fitting degree (R2) 0.9946 0.9917 0.9900 0.9913 0.9917 0.9850
Cohesion cn (MPa) 16.47 15.53 14.21 12.42 10.47 8.26
Internal friction angle un (°) 51.6 50.3 48.8 46.8 44.6 42.2

cohesion represents the magnitude of friction generated on the
sliding surface, which is related to the composition of particles,
cementation elements and porosity. With the increase of FT cycles,
the micro-cracks in the concrete continuously initiate and merge,
which destroy the cement matrix, increase the porosity, weaken
the concrete strength, and result in a significant decrease in cohe-
sion and internal friction angle [45].
In addition, in order to quantitatively characterize the influence
of FT cycles on cohesion and internal friction angle, an exponential
function is used to fit the test results, as shown in Fig. 9. The equa-
tion obtained by fitting is as follows:
n
cn ¼ 22:02  5:47e270 ð5Þ
n
u ¼ 59:76  8:12e323 ð6Þ
where n is the number of FT cycles; cn and un are the cohesion and
internal friction angle of concrete after n FT cycles, respectively.
It can be concluded from Fig. 9 that the cohesion cn and internal
friction angle un decrease exponentially with the increase of FT
cycles. This phenomenon can be explained as follows: FT damage
is the process of concrete fatigue failure, and internal damage will
accumulate with the increase of FT cycles, leading to the degrada-
tion of concrete mechanical properties; therefore, at the beginning
of FT cycles, the internal damage of concrete is less, and the atten-
uation rate of cohesion and internal friction angle is lower; and
with the continuous increase of FT cycles, the FT damage inside
concrete begins to accumulate in large quantities, leading to an
exponential increase in the attenuation rate of cohesion and inter-
nal friction angle until the specimen failed. This law is consistent
with the variation in relative mass loss, normalized dynamic elastic
modulus and triaxial peak stress, which indicates that the cohesion
and internal friction angle determined by the above method can
accurately characterize the internal structural change of concrete
due to FT damage, and will be used as constitutive parameters in
the following numerical model.

4. Numerical analysis

According to the above experimental research, the influence

indexes of FT damage (the attenuation law of triaxial strength,
elastic modulus, cohesion and internal friction angle) are intro-
duced into the mesoscopic parameters, and the numerical model
Fig. 9. Variation in cn and un with FT cycles.
based on real aggregate is established to monitor the development

Fig. 10. 3D geometry of real aggregate in STL format by CT.

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X. Zhu, X. Chen, N. Zhang et al. Construction and Building Materials 288 (2021) 123110

Fig. 11. Clump template for real aggregate.

Fig. 12. (a) Numerical model based on real aggregate, and (b) Triaxial loading diagram.

Table 4
Main mesoscopic parameters of the numerical models subjected to different FT cycles.

Parameters Number of FT cycles

0 50 100 150 200 250
Effective elastic modulus (GPa) 23.36 22.89 22.28 21.61 20.84 20.02
Tensile strength (MPa) 23.11 21.65 20.09 17.49 14.91 11.66
Cohesion cn (MPa) 16.81 15.75 14.61 12.72 10.84 8.48
Internal friction angle un (°) 51.2 49.9 48.3 46.2 44.0 41.8

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X. Zhu, X. Chen, N. Zhang et al.
of cracks inside the concrete in real-time, so as to study the inter-
nal damage evolution of concrete subjected to different FT damage
under triaxial loads.
4.1. Numerical model
Distinct-Element Method was first introduced by Cundall
[46,47] to simulate the mechanical problems of granular materials.
This method was later applied to soil, concrete and other viscous
materials to simulate their mechanical behavior [48,49]. PFC3D is
a numerical simulation software based on this method. In PFC3D,
particles are regarded as rigid bodies with finite mass, and they
move independently according to Newton’s second law. The parti-
cles interact with each other in pair contact through internal force
and torque, and update the internal force and torque in real-time.
When the force acting on the bond exceeds the bond strength, it
Fig. 13. Comparison of triaxial stress–strain curves between numerical simulation
and test (n = 0, r3 = 2.5 MPa).
Fig. 14. (a) Failure mode of the specimen, (b) Failure mode of the model, and (c) Cracks development in the model (n = 0, r3 = 2.5 MPa).
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Construction and Building Materials 288 (2021) 123110
will break and a micro-crack will be formed [50]. However, in order
to accurately simulate the fracture process of materials by PFC3D, it
is necessary to determine the constitutive model at particle size to
calculate the contact force between particles. For the parallel-
bonded model, the bond between two contact particles is similar
to the mechanical behavior of the cementitious materials [51,52],
and the elastic interaction is established between the particles,
which does not affect the relative sliding between the particles,
so the numerical model of self-compacting concrete is established
based on this constitutive model.
For obtaining a more realistic triaxial mechanical response of
self-compacting concrete, it is necessary to establish a numerical
model based on real aggregates. Hence, the aggregates used for
casting the self-compacting concrete specimens are first scanned
by computed tomography (CT), so as to obtain the 3D geometry
of real aggregate in STL format, as shown in Fig. 10. Then, the 3D
geometry of the real aggregate is imported into the PFC3D model,
and pebbles are filled into the 3D geometry to create a clump tem-
plate based on real aggregate, as shown in Fig. 11. Finally, a numer-
ical model of self-compacting concrete with a diameter of 50 mm
and a height of 100 mm is generated according to the proportion
of aggregates of different shapes. The size of fine aggregates is
set from 2 to 5 mm with continuous grading, and the number of
clumps generated is 17801, as shown in Fig. 12(a).
The loading steps of the triaxial test on the generated numerical
model are as follows: firstly, the contraction of the surrounding
wall is controlled to make the confining pressure reach the target
confining pressure; then, the upper wall and lower wall are con-
trolled to apply axial pressure to the numerical model, and the
loading rate is set to 0.5 lm/s (i.e. 5  106/s); meanwhile, the sur-
rounding pressure is dynamically adjusted by servo control to keep
the applied confining pressure constant as the axial pressure is
applied. The triaxial loading mode is shown in Fig. 12(b).
4.2. Calibration of mesoscopic parameters
Although the mesoscopic parameters are intrinsically related to
the test parameters [48,53,54], the test parameters cannot be
directly applied to the numerical model, and the mesoscopic
parameters need to be determined by parameter calibration.
X. Zhu, X. Chen, N. Zhang et al.
Hence, the numerical simulation results are fitted to the test
results by adjusting the mesoscopic parameters in this paper, so
as to obtain accurate mesoscopic parameters. However, for the
concrete subjected to different FT cycles (0, 50, 100, 150, 200 and
250 FT cycles), the internal structure of concrete is changed due
to the FT damage, which shows the difference in macroscopic per-
formance. Therefore, it is necessary to calibrate more than one set
of mesoscopic parameters, which complicates the numerical anal-
ysis and affects the accuracy of the simulation results. If a set of
mesoscopic parameters can be calibrated as the benchmark, and
then the influence indexes of FT damage (the attenuation law of
triaxial strength, elastic modulus, cohesion and internal friction
angle) obtained through the tests can be introduced into the
benchmark mesoscopic parameters, the calibration program can
be simplified and relatively accurate simulation results can be
obtained.
Fig. 15. Comparison of triaxial stress–strain curves between numerical simulation
and test (n = 50, r3 = 2.5 MPa).
Fig. 16. (a) Failure mode of the specimen, (b) Failure mode of the model, and (c) Cracks development in the model (n = 50, r3 = 2.5 MPa).
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Construction and Building Materials 288 (2021) 123110
In this paper, the triaxial test on the concrete subjected to 0 FT
cycles under confining pressure of 2.5 MPa is taken as the calibra-
tion benchmark, and a numerical model with a diameter of 50 mm
and a height of 100 mm is established. The modeling steps and
loading modes are shown in Section 4.1. The main mesoscopic
parameters of the benchmark model are obtained by parameter
calibration, as shown in Table 4. The triaxial stress–strain curves
of numerical simulation and test results are shown in Fig. 13. It
can be seen from the figure that the elastic modulus and peak devi-
ator stress obtained by numerical simulation are in good agree-
ment with the test results in the pre-peak stage, which indicates
that the numerical simulation effectively reproduces the elastic
and inelastic stages of the triaxial test. In the post-peak stage, there
is a certain deviation between the numerical simulation curve and
the test curve, and the test curve will fluctuate slightly, while the
numerical simulation curve is relatively smooth. This may be due
Fig. 17. Influence of FT damage on the development of cracks in the numerical
model (r3 = 2.5 MPa).
X. Zhu, X. Chen, N. Zhang et al. Construction and Building Materials 288 (2021) 123110

Fig. 18. Comparison of numerical simulation and experimental data of self-compacting concrete subjected to different FT cycles.

12
X. Zhu, X. Chen, N. Zhang et al.
Table 5
Relative errors d (%) between numerical and experimental values of peak deviatoric stress.
Confining pressure Number of FT cycles
0 50
0 MPa 2.06 1.68
2.5 MPa 1.09 2.21
5 MPa 2.85 4.84
10 MPa 1.91 2.97


*d ¼ rnum  rexp =rexp  100%, where rnum and rexp are numerical and experimental values of peak deviatoric stress, respectively.
to the holes generated in the casting process inside the specimen,
which are compacted during the triaxial test, leading to the fluctu-
ation of the test curve, and this problem does not exist in the
numerical model. Although there is some deviation between the
simulation and the test in the post-peak stage, the numerical
model is able to reproduce the triaxial mechanical properties of
the specimen in an acceptable range. Meanwhile, in order to show
the degree of coincidence between the numerical simulation
and the test results more intuitively, the comparison between
the failure modes of the specimen and numerical model is given
in Fig. 14. It can be concluded from the figure that the typical
macroscopic fracture surface formed by numerical simulation is
basically consistent with that of the test, and the failure occurs
in the lower right part of the specimen or model, forming a coher-
ent diagonal macroscopic fracture. In addition, two types of cracks
are noted in Fig. 14(c), the cracks generated by shear failure (PB-
shearFail) and the cracks generated by tensile failure (PB-tenFail).
According to the development of internal cracks, a small number
of tensile cracks are generated on the top and bottom of the model.
In the lower part of the model, a large number of coherent shear
cracks are generated, and the cracks connect to form the macro-
scopic failure surface, which is the main reason for the failure of
the model.
Subsequently, the benchmark mesoscopic parameters and the
influence indexes of FT damage (the attenuation law of triaxial
strength, elastic modulus, cohesion and internal friction angle)
are used to determine the mesoscopic parameters of the other five
groups of concrete subjected to 50, 100, 150, 200 and 250 FT cycles,
as shown in Table 4.
4.3. Numerical model prediction
For proving the predictive ability of the established numerical
model on the triaxial mechanical properties of self-compacting
concrete subjected to different FT cycles, firstly, the triaxial test
on the concrete subjected to 50 FT cycles under confining pressure
of 2.5 MPa is simulated by using the mesoscopic parameters deter-
mined in Section 4.2. The triaxial stress–strain curve and failure
mode of the numerical model are shown in Figs. 15 and 16, respec-
tively. It can be concluded from the figure that the triaxial stress–
strain curve of the numerical model reproduces each loading stage
of the triaxial test, and the model curve is in good agreement with
the test curve, and the typical macroscopic fracture surface of the
numerical model is basically consistent with that of the test. This
indicates that the numerical model based on real aggregate in this
paper can accurately predict the triaxial mechanical properties of
self-compacting concrete subjected to FT damage.
Meanwhile, by comparing Figs. 14 and 16, it can be intuitively
seen that the number of cracks in the specimen subjected to 50
FT cycles under triaxial loads is significantly more than that of
the specimen without FT damage. In order to quantitatively ana-
lyze the difference, the variation trend of the number of internal
cracks is plotted by the monitoring data of the numerical model,
as shown in Fig. 17. The strain corresponding to the crack initiation
point of the concrete specimen without FT damage under triaxial
13
Construction and Building Materials 288 (2021) 123110
100 150 200 250
2.58 2.31 2.42 3.45
1.34 2.05 1.38 2.15
3.99 6.22 1.29 5.39
5.16 2.32 3.96 4.56
loads is approximately 0.37%, while that of the concrete specimen
subjected to 50 FT cycles is relatively small, approximately 0.13%,
which is mainly due to the FT damage that causes many primary
cracks in the concrete and reduces the deformation resistance of
the concrete. In addition, the number of tensile cracks, shear cracks
and total cracks for the concrete specimen without FT damage
under triaxial loads are 1612, 3314 and 4916, respectively, while
those for the concrete specimen subjected to 50 FT cycles are
3051, 5290 and 8341, increased by 89.27%, 59.63% and 69.67%,
respectively. And the proportion of tensile cracks increased from
32.80% of the concrete without FT damage to 36.58% of the con-
crete subjected to 50 FT cycles, which is consistent with the failure
mode of the concrete specimens in Section 3.2.1. This is mainly
because FT damage destroys the internal structure of concrete,
weakens the resistance to triaxial loads, and makes it easier to gen-
erate internal cracks.
Then, the concrete specimens subjected to different FT cycles
under different confining pressures are simulated by the meso-
scopic parameters in Table 4, and the comparison between the
simulation and the test curves is obtained, as shown in Fig. 18. In
addition, the relative errors d (%) between numerical and experi-
mental values of peak deviatoric stress (r1-r3) are listed in Table 5.
The comparison shows that there is a good consistency between
the simulation results and experimental data. The model can well
describe the main triaxial behavior of self-compacting concrete
subjected to different FT damages under different confining
pressures. Furthermore, it can be inferred that the model can also
describe the triaxial behavior of concrete subjected to other FT
cycles if the corresponding parameters are given.
5. Conclusions
This study investigates the triaxial mechanical properties of
self-compacting concrete subjected to different FT cycles under dif-
ferent confining pressures. Based on experimental analysis and
parallel-bonded constitutive model, a discrete element model con-
sidering real aggregate is established and its applicability is
proved. The following conclusions can be drawn:
(1) The higher confining pressure can restrict the initiation and
combination of internal micro-cracks, and significantly
improve the triaxial performance of concrete. Furthermore,
the continuous freezing and melting of pore water inside
the concrete can cause obvious fatigue damage, weaken
the peak deviator stress and lateral deformation capacity
of concrete, and make its sensitivity to confining pressure
gradually increase.
(2) Based on the Mohr-coulomb failure criterion, the triaxial
failure model considering FT damage is established. This
model can well describe the effect of FT cycles on the cohe-
sion cn and internal friction angle un of self-compacting
concrete.
(3) The influence indexes of FT damage are introduced into the
mesoscopic parameters, and the discrete element model
based on real aggregate is established. Compared with the
X. Zhu, X. Chen, N. Zhang et al.
experimental results, the model can effectively reproduce
the main triaxial behavior of self-compacting concrete sub-
jected to different FT cycles under different confining
pressures.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Xiangyi Zhu: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Data
curation, Writing - original draft. Xudong Chen: Resources, Writ-
ing - review & editing, Supervision. Nan Zhang: Methodology,
Writing - review & editing. Xinquan Wang: Resources, Writing -
review & editing, Supervision. Hongguo Diao: Methodology, Writ-
ing - review & editing, Software.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared
to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgments
The research is based upon the work supported by the Natural
Science Foundation for Excellent Young Scholars of Jiangsu Pro-
vince (Grant No. BK20190075), the National Key Research and
Development Project (Grant No. 2020YFC1511900), the National
Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 52009122), the
Science and Technology Plan Project of Zhejiang Provincial Depart-
ment of Transportation (Grant No. 2019007) and Research Project
of Zhejiang Provincial Department of Education (Grant No.
Y201941345).
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