Application of Nonlinear Behaviour for Concrete Material in Numerical Simulation

Abstract

Concrete is the leading and essential construction material for current buildings and bridge structures. The concrete’s behaviour is nonlinear and complex, especially in the compression softening stage and tension softening stage. In the context of many concrete damage model types that have been widely studied and published, the task of finding a concrete damage model for the simulation method by using finite element software to model the nonlinear behaviour of reinforced concrete structures is necessary. The paper introduces the application of a nonlinear behavioural model of concrete materials with build-in stress–strain relations in two states; compression and tension, which depend on how the element mesh and length element are divided. Through the setting of the compression and tension behaviour curve of concrete, the concrete damage variables, $d_c , d_t$, will be calculated according to Alfarah et al. (Eng Struct 132:70–86, 2017, [1]) instead of constant values as in previously published studies. Therefore, by simulating the experiments published in the literature with ABAQUS, a suitable concrete damage model is proposed to simulate concrete structures in case of static load. The results obtained from this works are promising and can be used as an appropriate reference.