Multiscale material design and crack path prediction of a polymer-modified cementitious cover layer

A polymer-modified cementitious composite which is used as the cover layer of bridges and highways is designed based on the multiscale material design theory. A meso-scale lattice model is employed to predict the primary mechanical properties and the crack paths of the designed cementitious cover layer. The modeling is done based on the meso-structure of concrete captured through a micro-CT (micro-focus computational tomography). Further, the prediction results of the modeling are compared by the experimental results. The results show that the raw materials of the polymer-modified cementitious cover layer can effectively be selected and optimized by the multiscale material design theory and the lattice model.