MODELLING THE NONLINEAR BEHAVIOUR OF R/C BEAMS WITH MODERATE SHEAR SPAN AND WITHOUT STIRRUPS USING ANSYS

Sonia L. Parvanova1, Konstantin S. Kazakov2, Irina G. Kerelezova1, Gospodin K. Gospodinov1 , Mogens P. Nielsen3 University of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Geodesy Faculty of Civil Engineering, 1 Hr. Smirnenski blv., 1046 Sofia Abstract: A special purpose 3D concrete finite element is employed in this research to model the complex nonlinear behaviour of reinforced concrete beams with no shear reinforcement. The theory is based on the 5 parameter plasticity failure surface due to Willam-Warnke and takes into account the tensile cracking in three orthogonal directions plus crushing status of certain Gaussian integration point. A comparison is made with experimental and numerical results taken from the literature. The load deflection curve analysis indicates a big sensitivity of the solution to small changes of the material parameters which shows that a further research for their adjustment is needed. Although in a smeared manner the shear cracking is available, the preliminary conclusions suggest that the typical big sliding accompanying the development of the critical shear crack is not fully handled by the present model. Key words: Fracture mechanics, flexural and shear cracks, reinforced concrete, ANSYS 1. Introduction The experimental data of R/C beams working in flexure suggests a close agreement between the test results and those from numerical simulations. For deeper beams working in flexure and shear, on the other hand, there is much larger difference between predictions and test results, indicating that the problem is very complex and not fully understood. It is however well known fact that the flexural failure of R/C beams is generally ductile, whereas the shear failure is usually brittle, so the shear transfer mechanism is depending of many different geometric and material parameters.
F
loading plates

Beam data
L=1800 mm a= 600 mm b= 100 mm d= 240 mm h= 200 mm a/h=3 concrete: Ec=35500 N/mm2 ft=2.88 N/mm2 fc=26.7 N/mm2 steel: Es=206000 N/mm2 fy=396 N/mm2

concrete beam bearing plate

L-2a L

216 40 mm

Figure 1. Geometric and material data for the reinforced concrete beam with no shear reinforcement analyzed in paper [3]. The shear span ratio in this case a/h=3 is considered moderate
1 2

University of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Geodesy, Sofia, Bulgaria Lozenetz-consult Ltd, Sofia, Bulgaria 3 Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby, Kopenhagen, Denmark

To understand the complex nature of the interaction that takes place between the cracked concrete and reinforcement, rectangular cross section beams with flexural reinforcement, but without shear reinforcement (stirrups) will be considered in this numerical research. Many test of simply supported R/C beams with no stirrups under two symmetrical concentrated forces are reported all over the world - see references [1] and [2]. In this paper we use the test results of Hibino et al. [3], where along with the experimental results a nonlinear numerical model is proposed and some useful comparisons and conclusions are made see Fig. 1 for the particular beam geometric and material data details. 2. The 3D ANYS concrete finite element and its options The implementation of nonlinear material laws in finite element analysis codes is usually tackled by software developers by programming the material behaviour independently of the elements to which it may be specified. Another idea is employed in ANSYS, where a special three-dimensional eight noded solid isoparametric element, Solid65 is developed. It models the nonlinear response of brittle materials and is based on a constitutive model for the triaxial behaviour of concrete after Williams and Warnke - see Fig. 2. (c) and [4] for details.
8 Gaussian integration points

(a)

(c)

critical shear crack

flexural cracks 8 Nodal points of the brick finite element

Flexural and shear cracks development taken from the experiment (b)

300 concrete (only) elements

(d)

Integration point crack plane

x
60 concrete and smeared steel elements

z
principal stress direction

Finite element mesh

Figure 2. (a) Crack development picture taken from the test [3]; (b)Finite element mesh; (c) The concrete brick element nodal and Gaussian integration points; (d) Crack plane at a given Gaussian integration point is perpendicular to the principal tensile stress direction

The element includes a smeared crack idea for handling cracking in tension zones and a plasticity algorithm to account for the possibility of concrete crushing in compression zones. Each element has eight integration points (Fig. 2. (c) and (d)) at which cracking and crushing checks are performed. The element behaves in a linear elastic manner until either of the specified tensile f t or compressive f c strengths is exceeded. Cracking (or crushing) of an element is initiated once one of the element principal stresses, at an element integration point, exceeds the specified tensile or compressive concrete strength. The formation of a crack is achieved by the modification of the stress-strain relationships of the element to introduce a plane of weakness in the principal stress direction. Subsequent to the formation of an initial crack, stresses tangential to the crack face may cause a second even third crack to develop at considered integration point.

The amount of shear transfer across a crack can be varied between full shear transfer and no shear transfer at a cracked section. In ANSYS that option is controlled by two coefficients 1 for an open crack and 2 for a closed crack. They are so called shear retention factors and range between 0 (no aggregate interlock) to 1 (full aggregate interlock). The reinforcement may be modeled as an additional smeared stiffness distributed through the element in a specified orientation (as used in this paper) or alternatively by using discrete strut or beam elements connected to the solid elements. The smeared stiffness which is the option employed in this research, allows the elastic-plastic response of the reinforcement to be included in the simulation. No shear stiffness of the reinforcing bars can be modeled, so an important factor such as dowel action is excluded in the shear transfer mechanism. As shown in Fig. 2.(b) half of the beam is analyzed and the finite element mesh consists of 300 concrete elements plus another 60 mixed elements put on the lower side of the beam. In those elements the flexural steel bars are smeared over the concrete material representing the required additional stiffness in x direction. 3. Solution strategy and some numerical results Many numerical tests were performed for the beam described in Fig. 1 using different constitutive options and parameters. It became clear that the flexural and shear crack development is of a paramount importance for the beam carrying capacity and its failure mode.
()
F Plane of symmetry Load step 20 of 89: F=10260 [N] =0.756 [mm]
flexural vertical cracks no yielding in steel no concrete plasticity

typical bending vertical cracks

(b)

V 8-

flexural-shear cracks

development of the bending cracks Load step 69 of 89: F=36720 [N] =3.781 [mm]
developed flex. cracks developed flex/shear cr. just before initiation of the critical shear crack

(c)

V idea of the critical shear crack 8-

cracks due to compression (splitting cracks) Load step 87 of 89: F=46440 [N] =7.600 [mm]
full cracking state yielding in steel concrete plasticity big displacements increment just before collapse

V 8- 3. Bending and shear crack development at the front side of the beam:(a) Purely flexural Figure

(bending) vertical cracks at step 20; (b) Additional flexural - shear cracks at step 69; (c) Final crack development at step 87 just before the collapse the critical shear diagonal crack is clearly identified and there are splitting cracks at the upper part of the beam due to compression

In Fig. 3 crack developments are shown for three of the most important load steps. As reported in work [5] we found that ANSYS crushing option does not work properly for simulation like that, because at the moment few integration points located at upper part of the beam exceed the compressive concrete strength they do not contribute anymore to the stiffness matrix. As a result the shear resistance capacity at the vertical cross section is very low and the solution does not converge. In our case (see Fig. 4) the solution stops very soon after the development of bending cracks (at about 3 mm deflection), so it was not able to reproduce the shear cracks development, not to speak about yielding of the longitudinal tensile reinforcement steel. Under those circumstances the crushing option was removed and the concrete plasticity (crushing) in the compression zone was modeled using von Mises plasticity multilinear option. The following well known nonlinear uniaxial stress-total strain relationship was used [5], being discretized at 6 points of equal distance ranging between 0 and 0 :
( ) = E c 1+ 0
2

(1)

where 0 = 2 f c / Ec , Ec = / , and is the stress at any strain , 0 is the strain at the ultimate compressive strength f c and Ec is the Youngs modulus for the concrete. For the nonlinear loading program the number of loading substeps was chosen 100 and the beam was loaded up to failure using load control option. Activation of the above concrete plasticity option led to completely new crack development picture see Fig. 3 (a), (b) and (c). The nonlinear numerical solution was able to completely reproduce the full range of cracking including the pure flexural (Fig. 3.(a)), flexural-shear (Fig. 3.(b)), and the critical shear crack, see Fig. 3.(c). There is a clear indication that the path of the shear cracks follows the trajectory of the principal stresses. It is instructive when discussing the nonlinear crack propagation and plasticity softening to follow the force-midspan deflection response given in Fig.4. The bending cracks development in the experiment is quite smooth whereas in the numerical solution curve it is flat and sudden. The explanation is simple. The ANSYS cracking option does not include properly the tensile stress relaxation, to say it in other words the fracture energy parameter G f is not included in the model as an important material constant. That fact does not generally affect the solution since the tensile steel capacity is available, therefore the sudden stress drop at the cracking points explains the discrepancy between the two curves at the beginning of nonlinear process. Once the tensile cracking phase is completed the beam develops some bending-shear type of cracks which are shown in Fig. 3 (b). They initiate as bending cracks in the shear beam span and later turn over to diagonal shear crack at upper part following the principal stress direction. At the same time a growing of the bending cracks is observed, so the need of additional capacity activates the main shear transfer mechanism. That involves the initiation and quick propagation of the so-called critical shear crack which is happening immediately after load step 69 with jump of deflection value from 3.78 mm to 4.02 mm. The propagation of the critical diagonal crack provokes grow up of concrete plastic strain and relevant material softening, although the aggregate interlock mechanism is on through beta factors (in our case 1 = 2 = 0.6 ). The tensile steel yielding begins at deflection value of about 5 mm and after that the solution needs more and more iteration to converge. The numerical curve becomes flat which corresponds very well to the experiment, so after sudden and big increasing of deflection of about 9 mm the solution stops. It is interesting to note that just before the collapse few splitting cracks appear at the upper part of the beam due to crushing failure of the concrete there. Probably that fact including the big amount of plasticity deformations in the steel are the reason for failure of the numerical solution.

Figure 4. Force - deflection curves comparison between experimental test and numerical solution

4. Discussion It is well known that the good correlation of test and numerical solutions depends on the assignment of accurate linear and non-linear material properties. In general given the compressive strength f c , taken from the experiment of the concrete, it is thus usually possible to arrive at a sensible set of material data for inclusion in the nonlinear numerical model. The other material parameters such as Youngs modulus Ec and tensile strength f t are treated as generic data and could be assessed by the existing rules of thumb. For example the BS code for reinforced concrete estimates the tensile strength of concrete from its known compression strength by the formula: ft = 0.36 (fc)1/2, whereas for the Youngs modulus the following equation could be used: Ec = 9100 (fc)1/3. In our case the material parameters f c , f t and Ec are explicitly given in paper [3] without comments how they are received. Taking as a basis the value of f c = 26.7 N / mm 2 and exploring the above equations we get f t = 1.86 N / mm 2 (against 2.88 in [3]), and Ec = 27195 N / mm 2 (against 35500 in [3]). The differences are quite big and that could affect the numerical solution accordingly. The situation is much clear in the context of the reinforcing bars. Generally the nominal strength of the reinforcement is specified and it is assumed in design that it behaves in an elastic-perfectly plastic manner. Without going into details we shall mention that a kind of a parametric study was performed and a number of numerical solutions were analyzed in order to better estimate the sensitivity of different factors. For example calculating a different value for the tensile strength f t having in mind the size of concrete finite element and value of fracture energy GF = 0.1 N / mm , we get very good fit between numerical and experimental curves at the first nonlinear phase up to deflection of 2 mm. After that no influence of f t factor was observed. It was also established that the numerical solution is very sensitive to the steel constitutive

nonlinear modeling and the small changes of steel material parameters, such as the value of Youngs modulus Es or yield stress fy. For example employing a bilinear elastic - perfectly plastic model we get a stiffer model. When using a multilinear stress-total strain relationship (similar to equation (1)) for the steel reinforcement bar, the numerical solution gets the type given in Fig. 4. The discrepancy for the value of ultimate load obtained by means of the numerical solution and experiment is about 4.2 %. We shall also mention that in the numerical simulation the value of steel yielding stress is 11 % less then the one given in paper [3]. 5. Conclusions This work should be considered as part of a research project related to development of new numerical models for nonlinear analysis of structures made from quasibrittle materials like concrete using fracture mechanics approach. Based on the points raised in numerical results and discussion sections, we draw the following main conclusions from this numerical research: The general conclusion is that using 3D ANSYS modeling we are able to properly simulate the nonlinear behaviour of R/C beams without shear reinforcement having a moderate shear span size (a/h=3 for the beam under consideration); ANSYS 3D concrete element is very good concerning flexural and shear crack development but poor concerning the crushing state. However this deficiency could be easier removed by employing a certain multilinear plasticity model available in ANSYS; The particular concrete finite element does not consider one of the most important fracture mechanics parameters the fracture energy GF. That means that in the case of concrete beam with no reinforcement we will be not able to get a solution; By using ANSYS smeared approach for beams with moderate shear span we are not able to reproduce satisfactory the softening due to big sliding emerging at the critical shear crack. That is likely to be more realistically achieved by 2D discrete crack approach; The results and the parametric study (not given in the paper) suggest that we need some correction factors to adjust the values of material parameters available from experiment and convert them to effective parameters related to the particular modeling; Therefore much more research is needed in order to: (1) develop a similar simulation for R/C deeper beams; (2) suggest reliable methods for adjusting the experimental material data to effective parameter data suitable to particular finite element models. Literature 1. Nielsen, M. P., Limit analysis and concrete plasticity, second edition, CRC press, 1999. 2. Leonhardt, F., R. Walter, Schubversuche an einfeldrigen Stahlbetonbalken mit und ohne Schubbewehrung, Deutscher Ausschuss fr Stahlbeton, Heft 151, Berlin,1962. 3. Hibino, K., T. Kojima, N. Takagi, FEM study on the shear behaviour of R/C beam by the use of discrete model, Proceedings of the DIANA Conference - Constitutive models for quasi-brittle materials, October 2002. 4. ANSYS , ANSYS 9.0 Manual Set, ANSYS Inc., Southpoint, 275 Technology Drive, Canonsburg, PA 15317, USA. 5. Kachlakev, D., T. Miller, FE Modeling of Reinfoced Concrete Structures Strengthened with FRP Lamiates, Final Report SPR 316, Oregon State Uiversity, Department of Transportation, May 2001. Acknowledgements Funding for this project and the research described herein was supplied by the National Science Fund under the contract TH 1406/04. Their support is gratefully acknowledged.