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Abstract The compressive strength (fc) and Young’s modulus (Ec) of concretes are properties of great importance in civil engineering problems. To this day, despite the relevance of the subject, concretes are still designed based on charts and empirical formulae. This scenario is even more imprecise for lightweight aggregate concretes (LWAC), which contain less design methodologies and case studies available in the literature. In this sense, the present work presents a numerical simulation for predicting the properties of LWAC’s specimens using the Finite Element Method. The material was considered as biphasic, comprising lightweight aggregates and the enveloping mortar. Each phase was modelled with its own compressive strength, tensile strength and Young’s modulus. The achieved numerical results for fc and Ec were compared with their experimental counterparts, obtained from the literature. In total, 48 concrete formulations were assessed. Numerical results showed fair agreement with the experimental data. In general, the Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) was lower for the shale aggregates for both Young's modulus (1.75% versus 4.21% of expanded clay) and compressive strength (4.19% versus 9.89% of expanded clay). No clear trend of error was identified in relation to the aggregate proportion or to the mortar types, in which the MAPE varied from 2.36% to 8.13%. In conclusion, the simplification to spherical aggregates has shown satisfactory results, as has the adoption of a 2D model, which require less computational resources. Results encourage further applications with more complex geometrical aspects to improve the mix design and safety of LWAC.

This work presents a numerical approach for the automatic adjustment of parameters of the Mazars Damage Model, applied to a thermohydro- mechanical modeling of concrete structures. The procedure is based on a Scientific Workflow System (SWS) that addresses the combinatorial universe of adjustable parameters by minimizing the number of simulations required for optimized results. Not only does SWS improve efficiency, by also makes the strategy easier when compared to manual procedures. The adopted algorithm is developed in an intuitive script language and employs a distributed computational environment. Comparison to experimental data indicates that the proposed methodology was efficient and effective in improving the analysis, by minimizing errors and saving processing time.

Este trabajo propone una metodolo gía para evaluar el módulo elá stico de los hormigones de agre gados livianos. Para ello una fó rmula analítica se logra mediante el ajuste de la c urva de los resultados experime ntales de 135 muestras de hormigón hechas de 45 mezclas diferen tes. La validación de la metodología propuesta se lle va a cabo mediante la aplicac ión de la fórmula analítica obtenida a otro conjunto de 90 mues tras de hormigón hecha de 30 mezclas diferentes. Las c omparaciones con otros métodos u tilizados para predecir el módul o de elasticidad de hormigones de agregados livianos muestran que los resultados sean justos y sugieren que la metodología propuesta podría aplicarse en situaciones prácticas.