We were honored to have Ali Nour, Senior Engineer at Hydro-Québec, present Implementation of AAR Model for Concrete in Abaqus Explicit: Application to Hydraulic Structures at the SIMULIA Technology Day in Montreal, Québec, Canada on Wednesday, September 18, 2024. 

Abstract: Alkali-Aggregate Reaction (AAR) in concrete causes serious concerns for the operation and the integrity of many plain and reinforced concrete structures, basically for hydraulic structures. Due to complexity of AAR and its multi-physical nature, the use of chemomechanical modelling is very helpful for making predictions in terms of displacements and concrete damage. Moreover, the macro modelling approaches are still always preferred to perform engineering work for real structures. In this context, it is presented the implementation of a chemomechanical model of AAR for concrete in Abaqus Explicit. With this approach, the AAR effects are introduced via the VUEXPAN user-subroutine jointly with the Concrete Damage Plasticity (CDP) model of Abaqus. Moreover, it is presented a case study regarding real hydraulic structures affected by AAR located in North America.

Biography: Dr. Nour joined Ecole Polytechnique of Montreal as a Post-Doctoral fellow and research associate from 2004 to 2007.  He joined Hydro-Quebec in 2007, and now is a senior engineer at this company and a team leader of the structural analysis team. Dr. Nour was involved in the design and the assessment of several strategic facilities, including the Gentilly 2 Nuclear Power Plant, several dams, and Power Houses.  Dr. Nour has been a user of Abaqus since 2004.