A novel numerical simulation of the soil-structure interaction incorporating sustainable concrete and filling materials

As a result of urban transformation activities, natural disasters (earthquakes, tsunamis, storms, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, volcanic eruptions, firestorms, dust storms), regional and global wars, billions of tons of waste concrete occur. Therefore, the remediation process of waste concrete is one of the critical research topics of recent years. The sustainability concept provides a primary bridge between the demand for natural concrete material and the remediation process of waste concrete. Recycled aggregate and recycled concrete aggregate, which may be named sustainable materials, are obtained by the recycling process of waste concrete. Many experimental and numerical studies have been conducted to exhibit that this sustainable material is an alternative product to natural aggregate in recent years. According to the authors’ best knowledge, the originality of this study: (a) this is the first time that comprehensive numerical simulation results of soil-structure interaction containing sustainable concrete and filling materials are reported in detail, (b) investigation of the applicability of existing numerical simulation models in sustainable soil-structure interaction problems, (c) contribution the realistic simulation of the structural behavior of the sustainable soil-structure interactions. In this study, which contributed to the studies in the literature, a comprehensive numerical simulation of foundation beams resting on soils incorporated with conventional and sustainable material has been performed. The concrete properties of these foundation beams are considered with conventional (natural aggregate) concrete and sustainable (recycled aggregate) concrete with four different recycled concrete aggregate ratios (25%, 50%, 75%, and 100%). In addition, the material conditions of soils are regarded with six different mixed recycled aggregates as a filling material. Based on the numerical simulation, the deflection, rotation, bending moment, shear force, and spring force capacities of conventional and sustainable foundation beams resting on soils exhibited slightly different behavior depending on the recycled concrete aggregate and mixed recycled aggregate ratios. Finally, comparing the numerical simulation results of soil-structural interaction members incorporating conventional and sustainable materials indicated that the soil-structure interaction modeling process applied to conventional foundation beams resting on soils is also valid for sustainable members.