A computational homogenization framework is developed for heterogeneous thermo-chemical-elastic materials. The local response includes thermo-elastic deformations, hydration-induced shrinkage, and elastic moduli that depend on the degree of hydration, and which are coupled to the temperature field. This model allows for the description of early-age cementitious composites, where hydration reactions and heat transfer cause local expansion or shrinkage and modify stiffness. The framework predicts the evolution of macroscopic elastic and thermal properties, as well as macroscopic deformations due to hydration shrinkage and thermal expansion. It relies on Representative Volume Element (RVE) analyses to calculate elastic, thermo-elastic, and chemo-elastic homogenized tensors over a range of degrees of hydration. The constructed macroscopically hydration-temperature-dependent constitutive law can then be used in finite element simulations. The approach is applied in numerical examples involving alkali-activated slag mortars with graphite and metal inclusions, with applications in industrial nuclear waste encapsulation.
Architectural design strongly influences how fibrous composites resist tearing in the presence of defects, yet the mechanisms linking fiber architecture to flaw tolerance under large deformation remain poorly understood. Here, we investigate architecture-controlled tearing in soft fibrous composites using silk fiber–reinforced hydrogel laminates with unidirectional, cross-plied, and angled-plied fiber configurations. Notched tensile experiments spanning a wide range of flaw sizes, combined with in situ crack tracking and crack-tip kinematic analysis, reveal distinct architecture-dependent tearing pathways during stable tearing. While conventional bulk failure metrics show limited sensitivity to architectural differences, crack-tip kinematics expose systematic coupling between apparent crack extension, crack-tip opening displacement (CTOD), and crack-tip opening angle (CTOA). Unidirectional laminates maintain stable tearing even at extreme flaw sizes, whereas cross-plied and angled-plied laminates become progressively flaw-sensitive under increasing geometric confinement. Despite these distinct tearing pathways, CTOD–CTOA trajectories converge toward a constrained crack-opening geometry during stable tearing.These findings show that fiber architecture governs the kinematic pathway to fracture, while stable tearing evolves toward a reproducible geometry-based crack-tip state. This framework establishes crack-tip kinematics as a physically meaningful descriptor of tearing in highly deformable fibrous composites and identifies fiber architecture as a governing design strategy for controlling fracture pathways and flaw tolerance.
