TABLE OF CONTENTS Various methods exist for incorporating the constitutive models developed in the previous chapters into computer programs. The methods presented in this chapter are appropriate for numerical implementation of the models into flnite-element codes and are applicable for solving both static and dynamic problems.
In recent years, the finite-element method has emerged as the most powerful general method of structural analysis and has provided engineers with a tool of very wide applicability. Indeed, the finite-element method now offers a powerful and general analytical tool for reinforced concrete members and structures. Concrete cracking, tension stiffening, nonlinear multiaxial material properties, complex interface behavior, and other effects previously ignored or treated in a very approximate manner can now be considered rationally. The finite-element approach can provide not only new insights into behavior and design of ordinary reinforced concrete structures such as beams, columns, frames, slabs, and shear walls and panels but is an essential tool to be used directly for the analysis and design of complex structures such as offshore oil platforms, hyperbolic cooling towers, and nuclear containment structures. In principle, at least, numerical solutions can be achieved for virtually any engineering structural system in general and reinforced concrete structures in particular.
The following discussion is concerned with the numerical implementation and applications of these elastoplastic fracture models in the finite-element analysis of nonlinear deformation and ultimate-load behavior of reinforced and prestressed concrete structures. The chapter is divided into three parts. The first part describes the basic steps of any finite-element...
