Elastic-to-Plastic Strut-and-Tie Model for Concentric Anchorage Zones

Abstract

The strut-and-tie model (STM) has been adopted as a preferred methodology for the design of disturbed regions; however, an aspect that has not yet been sufficiently cleared up is the service behavior of structural concrete designed at the ultimate limit state. To address this issue, this paper is devoted to developing an advanced elastic-to-plastic strut-and-tie model (EPSTM) to capture the full elastic and inelastic response of the anchorage zones. The principle of stationary complementary energy is introduced into the STM to generate the adaptive EPSTM at each load step automatically. The proposed EPSTM provides a consistent analysis of the behavior of anchorage zones, including the average strain of struts and ties, load-deformation response, and the maximum crack width, throughout the loading process, and it has been verified to be sufficiently accurate when compared with testing results.