A 3D/2D comparison between heterogeneous mesoscale models of concrete

Paper in proceedings, 2013

A model for 3D Statistical Volume Elements (SVEs) of mesoscale concrete is presented and employed in the context of computational homogenization. The model is based on voxelization where the SVE is subdivided into a number of voxels (cubes) which are treated as solid finite elements. The homogenized response is compared between 3D and 2D SVEs to study how the third spatial dimension influence the over-all results. The computational results show that the effective diffusivity of the 3D model is about 1.4 times that of the 2D model.