A study on the numerical modelling of UHPFRC-strengthened members

The maintenance of large aging infrastructure across the world creates serious technical, environmental, and economic challenges. Ultra-high performance fibre-reinforced concretes (UHPFRC) are a new generation of materials with outstanding mechanical properties as well as very high durability due to their extremely low permeability. These properties open new horizons for the sustainable rehabilitation of aging concrete structures. Since UHPFRC is a young and evolving material, codes are still either lacking or incomplete, with recent design provisions proposed in France, Switzerland, Japan, and Australia. However, engineers and public agencies around the world need resources to study, model, and rehabilitate structures using UHPFRC. As an effort to contribute to the efficient use of this promising material, this paper presents a new numerical modelling approach for UHPFRC-strengthened concrete members. The approach is based on the Diverse Embedment Model within the global framework of the Disturbed Stress Field Model, a smeared rotating-crack formulation for 2D modelling of reinforced concrete structures. This study presents an adapted version of the DEM in order to capture the behaviour of UHPFRC by using a small number of input parameters. The model is validated with tension tests from the literature and is then used to model UHPFRC-strengthened elements. The paper will discuss the formulation of the model and will provide validation studies with various tests of beams, columns and walls from the literature. These studies will demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed modelling approach.