Crushing concrete to bring the aggregates back to be used for concrete structures is a process of creating recycled aggregate (RA). Recycled aggregate concrete (RAC) has become increasingly important in the field of construction. The use of recycled aggregate concrete made from recycled aggregate in civil engineering construction projects such as highways will provide both economic and environmental benefits in the near future. Achieving environmental sustainability will enable the Earth’s construction materials to support our future generations. Unfortunately, massive usage of RAC in the USA is not satisfying, even through the aging transportation infrastructure will inevitably produce tremendous amounts of waste concrete. Concrete structures or pavements generally suffer from the crack problem. The morphology and growth process of cracks, most importantly, how these factors affect the concrete structure, is of great significance. The study of RAC is thus considerably needed to encourage the application of RAC. Crack modeling may lead to improved recycled aggregate concrete. In this work, extended finite element approach and concrete damage plasticity material models are employed to predict the failure of recycled aggregate concrete. The recycled aggregate concrete was modeled based on a realistic concrete model with randomly distributed recycled aggregates. The arbitrary shapes of aggregates, and the new and old interfacial transition zones are constructed by using Fourier series. Recycled aggregate concrete models with or without initial crack are investigated. Results of using an extended finite element with both linear elastic fracture mechanics and cohesive segment approaches are discussed as well.
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