Comparative Investigation of Concrete Plasticity Models for Nonlinear Finite-Element Analysis of Reinforced Concrete Specimens

Abstract

The study presents the calibration procedure and the different challenges that arise with the selection of the material and plasticity parameters for the nonlinear finite-element analysis (FEA) of reinforced concrete structures. Two concrete models, the concrete damaged plasticity (CDP) and the concrete smeared cracking (CSC), are considered within the context of the computational model validation to provide a better understanding of their modeling parameters and to investigate their capabilities. The study describes each concrete model, and then previously tested plain and reinforced concrete specimens are analyzed under different loading conditions. The outcomes show that the CDP model predicts the response of the reinforced concrete specimens accurately, while the CSC model fails to capture the response of the analyzed specimens mainly due to convergence issues. Finally, the sensitivity of the numerical results on the fineness of the mesh is also presented, followed by suggestions to overcome this mesh sensitivity.