PhD Thesis

Modeling of walls built with concrete demolition waste

The construction sector is the largest consumer of non-renewable materials. Thus the current study focuses on reusing concrete demolition waste without further treatment for the construction of new buildings in a stone-masonry-like fashion. This is achieved by developing an efficient and practical modeling framework of a wall constructed with demolition debris. Spectral analysis is used to represent the irregular microstructure obtained from compressed point clouds. The interface friction between demolition units and masonry is investigated experimentally and validated numerically. The shape and roughness of the pieces are incorporated into the limit analysis model to predict the failure mode. While the project addresses the use of demolition waste from concrete structures in straight walls, the method can be applied to a large range of inert demolition waste and used for constructing structural elements of nearly any form.