As a thin layer surrounding aggregates, the interfacial transition zone (ITZ) has a significant influence on the mechanical performance of concrete, a large number of small elements is required to discretize the ITZ and its vicinity owing to its small thickness. In this contribution, the mesostructure of concrete is explicitly built by a novel method named improved random walking algorithm (IRWA), with which the grading, content, shape of aggregates and the thickness of ITZs, can be conveniently controlled by users, and high volume fraction of aggregate and remarkable efficiency can be achieved. In the framework of the scaled boundary finite element method (SBFEM), the image-based quadtree decomposition is employed to automatically generate the multi-level mesh for the concrete composites, with no trouble in dealing with hanging nodes or the dramatically changing element size in the vicinity of the material interface. The nonlocal damage model in integral format is extended to simulate progressive damage of concrete at mesoscale with good mesh independence. Four benchmarks are modelled to demonstrate the performance of the proposed approach, and the effects of model parameters on the structural responses are also discussed.

In this study, the safe critical temperature that can be tolerated by CFRP tendons under normal working conditions was derived through tensile tests at room and high temperatures. Next, the times required to reach a safe critical temperature for CFRP cables protected with different types of fire-retardant materials of various thicknesses were determined through fire resistance tests, Finally, fitting the surface of the finite element simulation results allowed the establishment of the temperature rise calculation model of CFRP tendons under the protection of fire-retardant materials. The results showed that 300 °C can be regarded as the safe critical temperature. Both high-silica needled felt and ceramic fiber felt exhibited high fireproof performance. With an increase in the thickness of the fire-retardant material, the time for the CFRP tendon to reach the inflection point of the heating rate increased, and the safe fire resistance time increased exponentially. According to the HC temperature rise curve, the fire resistance time of CFRP tendons protected by 24 mm thick high-silica needled felt was 45 min, and that for CFRP tendons protected by 24 mm thick ceramic fiber felt was 39.5 min. Under the action of fire corresponding to the hydrocarbon temperature rise model, the safe fire resistance time of CFRP tendons protected by 45 mm high-silica needled felt or 50 mm ceramic fiber felt was more than 2 h, sufficient to meet the specification. The proposed model of fire resistance performance enables the determination of the thickness of the fire resistance material required to obtain different degrees of fire resistance for CFRP cables for structural use.