Modern high-performance concretes allow ever lighter, more filigree and resource saving structures, which, however, are more susceptible to vibrations due to their reduced dead weight. Structures and components such as long span bridges for high speed trains, wind power plants or machine´s foundations are also typically subject to very large variable loads and high load cycle numbers. The fatigue behaviour of the high-performance concrete is decisive for the design and realization of such concrete applications. Due to the still existing gaps in the knowledge regarding the formation and propagation of fatigue damages in high-performance concretes, the effective use of modern high-performance concretes is hindered.
The objective of this priority program 2020 is to capture, understand, describe, model and predict the material degradation of high-performance concretes using the newest experimental and virtual numerical methods. Since the damage processes occur on a very small scale, they cannot be entirely observed during the load tests. The recording of suitable damage indicators during the experiments make the time-consuming fatigue tests already very demanding. To this extent, the desired results are developed from a close cooperation between the material science and the numerical mechanics knowledge, which is the interconnection of experiment and computation in the Experimental-Virtual-Lab. The model-based description of the heterogeneous concrete microstructure as well the damage and crack developing at different scale levels over several hundred of load cycles present particular research challenges in this priority program.