Uncertainty updating in the description of heterogeneous materials

Abstract

At a macroscopic scale, the details of mechanical behaviour are often uncertain, due to incomplete knowledge of details at small scales; this is especially acute if the materials have to be described before actually having been manufactured, such as in the case of concrete. Here the uncertainties are described by probabilistic methods, using recent numerical techniques for random fields based on white noise analysis. Numerical procedures are then developed to change/update the description once the materials have been manufactured, in order to take into accountadditionalinformation, obtainedforexamplefrommeasurements. This results in an improved description of the uncertainties of the material behaviour.