Numerical simulation of mesoscopic cracking of cement-treated base material based on random polygon aggregate model

Cracking failure of cement-treated base (CTB) has always been the concern of highway constructors. Mesoscale cracking analysis is an important means to study the damage degradation mechanism, which is difficult to be characterized by experimental techniques alone. The objective of this paper is to develop a random aggregate modelling method to simulate the mesoscopic cracking of CTB material. A minimum rectangle area method was proposed to calculate the polygon aggregate size, which is closer to the sieving analysis than the average radius method. A buffer zone method was proposed to determine the distance between randomly generated polygon aggregates. Based on the proposed random algorithm, finite element method (FEM) was adopted to build the mesoscopic model of CTB including aggregate, mortar, interfacial transition zone (ITZ) and air voids. Laboratory tests were conducted to validate the numerical model. Then the sensitivity analyses were conducted to study the influencing factors on cracking behavior. The simulation results indicate that the higher aggregate content and the finer gradation lead to the increase of ITZ, thus reducing the cracking resistance of the CTB material. Low porosity content is able to significantly reduce the stress concentration and thus improves the cracking resistance. The research results of this paper could be used to guide the crack resistant design of CTB material.