Effective Constitutive Response of Sustainable Next Generation Infrastructure Materials through High-Fidelity Experiments and Numerical Simulation

Design of novel infrastructure materials requires a proper understanding of the influence of microstructure on the desired performance. The priority is to seek new and innovative ways to develop sustainable infrastructure materials using natural resources and industrial solid wastes in a manner that is ecologically sustainable and yet economically viable. Structural materials are invariably designed based on mechanical performance. Accurate prediction of effective constitutive behavior of highly heterogeneous novel structural materials with multiple microstructural phases is a challenging task. This necessitates reliable classification and characterization of constituent phases in terms of their volume fractions, size distributions and intrinsic elastic properties, coupled with numerical homogenization technique. This paper explores a microstructure-guided numerical framework that derives inputs from nanoindentation and synchrotron x-ray tomography towards the prediction of effective constitutive response of novel sustainable structural materials so as to enable microstructure-guided design.