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When the spalling phenomenon is exploited for demolition of concrete structures, e.g. However, the numerical studies on demolition or drilling of concrete by exploiting the spalling phenomenon or heat shocks seem extremely rare or nonexistent, as the author could not find any of the kind. 2002) and concrete spalling under fire in particular (Fu and Li 2011 Tenchev and Purnell 2005 Ju et al. 2003, 2011 Caggiano and Guillermo 2015 Schrefler et al. Naturally, there are numerous studies on thermo-mechanical modelling of concrete in general (Gawin et al. In the present paper, this latter kind of concrete spalling, which is exploited in thermal jet rock drilling (Kant et al. While the occurrence of this kind of concrete spalling is an undesired event leading to a loss of load bearing capacity, spalling can also be a desired event to be exploited in drilling and demolition of concrete structures. This phenomenon is characterized by, often violent, ejection of chunks of concrete, called spalls, from heated concrete.
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Fire induced concrete spalling, for example, is a problem encountered with concrete structures under fire (Lottman 2017 Liu et al. Understanding concrete fracture processes under thermal and thermo-mechanical loading conditions is of substantial practical importance in structural engineering. The simulation results suggest that demolition of concrete structures by heat shock is a viable method. Different heat flux intensities and heating times as well as combined effect of surface roughness and pre-stress field are tested. The underlying uncoupled thermo-mechanical problem is solved with an explicit time marching scheme based on the staggered approach. Then, the problem of thermal spallation of concrete surface under dry conditions due to a high intensity, short duration heat flux is simulated under axisymmetric conditions. In the numerical examples, the performance of the present modelling approach is first demonstrated in the uniaxial compression and tension tests under plane strain conditions. This choice enables the study of the effects of inherent crack populations on the response of concrete under mechanical and thermal loading. A mesoscopic modelling approach with an explicit representation of aggregates as Voronoi polygons is chosen while the concrete fracture model is based on rate-dependent embedded discontinuity finite elements with Rankine criterion indicating a new crack initiation. This paper deals with 2D (plane strain) and axisymmetric numerical modelling of concrete fracture processes under mechanical and thermal loading.