This collection includes most of the ASU Theses and Dissertations from 2011 to present. ASU Theses and Dissertations are available in downloadable PDF format; however, a small percentage of items are under embargo. Information about the dissertations/theses includes degree information, committee members, an abstract, supporting data or media.

In addition to the electronic theses found in the ASU Digital Repository, ASU Theses and Dissertations can be found in the ASU Library Catalog.

Dissertations and Theses granted by Arizona State University are archived and made available through a joint effort of the ASU Graduate College and the ASU Libraries. For more information or questions about this collection contact or visit the Digital Repository ETD Library Guide or contact the ASU Graduate College at gradformat@asu.edu.

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Description
Being a remarkably versatile and inexpensive building material, concrete has found tremendous use in development of modern infrastructure and is the most widely used material in the world. Extensive research in the field of concrete has led to the development of a wide array of concretes with applications ranging from

Being a remarkably versatile and inexpensive building material, concrete has found tremendous use in development of modern infrastructure and is the most widely used material in the world. Extensive research in the field of concrete has led to the development of a wide array of concretes with applications ranging from building of skyscrapers to paving of highways. These varied applications require special cementitious composites which can satisfy the demand for enhanced functionalities such as high strength, high durability and improved thermal characteristics among others.

The current study focuses on the fundamental understanding of such functional composites, from their microstructural design to macro-scale application. More specifically, this study investigates three different categories of functional cementitious composites. First, it discusses the differences between cementitious systems containing interground and blended limestone with and without alumina. The interground systems are found to outperform the blended systems due to differential grinding of limestone. A novel approach to deduce the particle size distribution of limestone and cement in the interground systems is proposed. Secondly, the study delves into the realm of ultra-high performance concrete, a novel material which possesses extremely high compressive-, tensile- and flexural-strength and service life as compared to regular concrete. The study presents a novel first principles-based paradigm to design economical ultra-high performance concretes using locally available materials. In the final part, the study addresses the thermal benefits of a novel type of concrete containing phase change materials. A software package was designed to perform numerical simulations to analyze temperature profiles and thermal stresses in concrete structures containing PCMs.

The design of these materials is accompanied by material characterization of cementitious binders. This has been accomplished using techniques that involve measurement of heat evolution (isothermal calorimetry), determination and quantification of reaction products (thermo-gravimetric analysis, x-ray diffraction, micro-indentation, scanning electron microscopy, energy-dispersive x-ray spectroscopy) and evaluation of pore-size distribution (mercury intrusion porosimetry). In addition, macro-scale testing has been carried out to determine compression, flexure and durability response. Numerical simulations have been carried out to understand hydration of cementitious composites, determine optimum particle packing and determine the thermal performance of these composites.
ContributorsArora, Aashay (Author) / Neithalath, Narayanan (Thesis advisor) / Rajan, Subramaniam D. (Committee member) / Mobasher, Barzin (Committee member) / Chawla, Nikhilesh (Committee member) / Hoover, Christian G (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
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Description
Composite materials are now beginning to provide uses hitherto reserved for metals in structural systems such as airframes and engine containment systems, wraps for repair and rehabilitation, and ballistic/blast mitigation systems. These structural systems are often subjected to impact loads and there is a pressing need for accurate prediction of

Composite materials are now beginning to provide uses hitherto reserved for metals in structural systems such as airframes and engine containment systems, wraps for repair and rehabilitation, and ballistic/blast mitigation systems. These structural systems are often subjected to impact loads and there is a pressing need for accurate prediction of deformation, damage and failure. There are numerous material models that have been developed to analyze the dynamic impact response of polymer matrix composites. However, there are key features that are missing in those models that prevent them from providing accurate predictive capabilities. In this dissertation, a general purpose orthotropic elasto-plastic computational constitutive material model has been developed to predict the response of composites subjected to high velocity impacts. The constitutive model is divided into three components – deformation model, damage model and failure model, with failure to be added at a later date. The deformation model generalizes the Tsai-Wu failure criteria and extends it using a strain-hardening-based orthotropic yield function with a non-associative flow rule. A strain equivalent formulation is utilized in the damage model that permits plastic and damage calculations to be uncoupled and capture the nonlinear unloading and local softening of the stress-strain response. A diagonal damage tensor is defined to account for the directionally dependent variation of damage. However, in composites it has been found that loading in one direction can lead to damage in multiple coordinate directions. To account for this phenomena, the terms in the damage matrix are semi-coupled such that the damage in a particular coordinate direction is a function of the stresses and plastic strains in all of the coordinate directions. The overall framework is driven by experimental tabulated temperature and rate-dependent stress-strain data as well as data that characterizes the damage matrix and failure. The developed theory has been implemented in a commercial explicit finite element analysis code, LS-DYNA®, as MAT213. Several verification and validation tests using a commonly available carbon-fiber composite, Toyobo’s T800/F3900, have been carried and the results show that the theory and implementation are efficient, robust and accurate.
ContributorsHoffarth, Canio (Author) / Rajan, Subramaniam D. (Thesis advisor) / Goldberg, Robert (Committee member) / Neithalath, Narayanan (Committee member) / Mobasher, Barzin (Committee member) / Liu, Yongming (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016