Numerical Analysis Of Reinforced Concrete Structures

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Concrete is by far the most used building material due to its advantages: it is shapeable, cost-effective and available everywhere. Combined with reinforcement it provides an immense bandwidth of properties and may be customized for a huge range of purposes. Thus, concrete is the building material of the 20th century. To be the building material of the 21th century its sustainability has to move into focus. Reinforced concrete structures have to be designed expending less material whereby their load carrying potential has to be fully utilized. Computational methods such as Finite Element Method (FEM) provide essential tools to reach the goal. In combination with experimental validation, they enable a deeper understanding of load carrying mechanisms. A more realistic estimation of ultimate and serviceability limit states can be reached compared to traditional approaches. This allows for a significantly improved utilization of construction materials and a broader horizon for innovative structural designs opens up. However, sophisticated computational methods are usually provided as black boxes. Data is fed in, the output is accepted as it is, but an understanding of the steps in between is often rudimentary. This has the risk of misinterpretations, not to say invalid results compared to initial problem definitions. The risk is in particular high for nonlinear problems. As a composite material, reinforced concrete exhibits nonlinear behaviour in its limit states, caused by interaction of concrete and reinforcement via bond and the nonlinear properties of the components. Its cracking is a regular behaviour. The book aims to make the mechanisms of reinforced concrete transparent from the perspective of numerical methods. In this way, black boxes should also become transparent. Appropriate methods are described for beams, plates, slabs and shells regarding quasi-statics and dynamics. Concrete creeping, temperature effects, prestressing, large displacements are treated as examples. State of the art concrete material models are presented. Both the opportunities and the pitfalls of numerical methods are shown. Theory is illustrated by a variety of examples. Most of them are performed with the ConFem software package implemented in Python and available under open-source conditions.

Manual of numerical methods in concrete aims to present a unified approach for the available mathematical models of concrete, linking them to finite element analysis and to computer programs in which special provisions are made for concrete plasticity, cracking and crushing with and without concrete aggregate interlocking. Creep, temperature, and shrinkage formulations are included and geared to various concrete constitutive models.

In Finite Element Design of Concrete Structures: practical problems and their solutions the author addresses this blind belief in computer results by offering a useful critique that important details are overlooked due to the flood of information from the output of computer calculations. Indeed, errors in the numerical model may lead in extreme cases to structural failures as the collapse of the so-called Sleipner platform has demonstrated.

This collection contains 10 papers discussing finite element analysis of reinforced concrete structures presented at an international workshop held in New York, New York, June 2-5, 1991.

The book covers the application of numerical methods to reinforced concrete structures. To analyze reinforced concrete structures linear elastic theories are inadequate because of cracking, bond and the nonlinear and time dependent behavior of both concrete and reinforcement. These effects have to be considered for a realistic assessment of the behavior of reinforced concrete structures with respect to ultimate limit states and serviceability limit states. The book gives a compact review of finite element and other numerical methods. The key to these methods is through a proper description of material behavior. Thus, the book summarizes the essential material properties of concrete and reinforcement and their interaction through bond. These basics are applied to different structural types such as bars, beams, strut and tie models, plates, slabs and shells. This includes prestressing of structures, cracking, nonlinear stressstrain relations, creeping, shrinkage and temperature changes. Appropriate methods are developed for each structural type. Large displacement and dynamic problems are treated as well as short-term quasi-static problems and long-term transient problems like creep and shrinkage. Most problems are illustrated by examples which are solved by the program package ConFem, based on the freely available Python programming language. The ConFem source code together with the problem data is available under open source rules at concrete-fem.com. The author aims to demonstrate the potential and the limitations of numerical methods for simulation of reinforced concrete structures, addressing students, teachers, researchers and designing and checking engineers.