THREE-DIMESIONAL SEEPAGE ANALYSIS FOR CRACKED CONCRETE BASED ON EMBEDDED ELEMENTS AND ELASTIC ANALOGY

Over the serving period, cracks are usually induced in structural concrete by mechanical loading or environmental effects. Initiation, expanding and interconnection of cracks obviously increase the permeability of the cracked concrete. The conventional seepage analysis method associated with continuous solid elements encounters difficulties in mesh coordination. In this study, a new method, named the embedded element technique, was adopted to solve this problem. Considering the mathematical similarity between elasticity and seepage problem, water head and velocity field within the cracked concrete can be obtained by the analogy of the corresponding displacement and stress field. The effects of component permeability, element size, and crack opening displacement on the seepage field were discussed. Comparing the results obtained by the continuous model and the embedded element model, it is seen that, apart from providing satisfying results, the new method simplifies the finite element meshing and increases the calculation efficiency.