FEM-modeling of reinforced concrete and verication of the concrete material models available in ABAQUS

Daniel Eriksson and Tobias Gasch 2010-12-17

Abstract Reinforced concrete is a very complex material and is widely used as a construction material; for example in buildings, bridges and nuclear containment vessels. When design codes are not accurate enough and experiments are not possible to perform, other analyze methods are needed. Todays most common analyze method, for such cases, is the nite element method in combination with nonlinear concrete material models. These concrete models are very intricate to use and it is hard to nd instructions on how to use them. Therefore, this study includes a brief instruction on how to dene and use the concrete smeared cracking model and the concrete damaged plasticity model available in ABAQUS. The material models are also veried against experimental results from the literature with focus on the torsional behavior of concrete.

Royal Institute of Technology Department of Mechanics SE-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden

Contents
1 Introduction 1.1 1.2 Purpose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 3 3 4 4 4 7 10 10 13 14 15 15 16 17 17 19 21 23 26 27

2 Constitutive material models 2.1 Concrete smeared cracking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.1 2.1.2 2.2 Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dening the material model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Concrete damaged plasticity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.1 2.2.2 Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dening the material model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2.3

Reinforcement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

3 FEM-modeling of concrete with ABAQUS 3.1 3.2 Modeling aspects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Convergence problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

4 Verication of material models 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 Cube test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Unreinforced concrete beam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Unreinforced concrete axle subjected to torsion . . . . . . . . . . Reinforced concrete beam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

5 Conclusions 5.1 Further research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Introduction

When designing concrete structures according to design codes such as ACI 2008, BBK04 and Eurocode 2 the calculations often simplify the behavior of concrete. With the builtin safety margins in the codes the equations are often accurate enough for the design of reinforced concrete structures. But to capture the actual behavior of the structure one must use other methods that are able to account for the anisotropic nature of concrete, including cracking due to tensile stresses. The best method to describe the behavior is of course to do experiments on the actual structure, but unfortunately experiments are expensive and often not possible to perform. Another method that is able to account for some of these eects is the Finite Element Method (FEM) which is less expensive and easier to perform on complicated structures. Although it may seem easy to use commercial FEM software including concrete material models the non linearity of concrete causes many diculties for the user. The fact, that FEM is an approximate solution method in combination with the non linearity, results in an uncertainty whether the analysis is relevant or not. Some of the diculties are: Discretization of the real structure Choosing and dening the material model Obtaining a converging solution Interpreting the results To overcome all these diculties the user must have an extensive knowledge of FEM-theory and a good understanding about reinforced concrete as a structural material.

1.1

Purpose

The purpose of this study is partially to give the reader and the authors an introduction to the concrete models available in the FEM software ABAQUS. And partially to verify the material models and to examine whether these material models are able to analyze concrete members subjected to torsional loading. This study is made as a prestudy for future investigations of concrete structures.

1.2

Structure

In the second section, two of the material models for analyzing concrete structures available in ABAQUS will be introduced. First the basic theory of the material models is given and then the input parameters needed to dene the material are described. Suggestions are also given on how to dene the input parameters.

In the third section, some modeling aspects involving ABAQUS and concrete analysis will be discussed. A few diculties often encountered are mentioned and suggestions are given on how to overcome these problems. In the fourth section, the material models are veried by using dierent examples from the literature. In the fth, section the conclusions of this study are presented and some suggestions of further research are given.

Constitutive material models

In commercial FEM software there are many dierent material models for modeling crack propagation in concrete. Most of them are based on either nonlinear fracture mechanics, with a discrete or smeared approach, or plasticity theory. In this thesis, the focus will be on two material models in the FEM software ABAQUS, these are concrete smeared cracking and concrete damaged plasticity. They are based on nonlinear fracture mechanics and a coupled damaged plasticity theory, respectively. In this section, the basic theory of these material models will be given and then it will be explained how to dene them in a more practical manner. A brief introduction on how to model and dene the reinforcement in concrete structures will also be given in this section.

2.1

Concrete smeared cracking

The concrete smeared cracking model can be used to model all types of concrete structures; both unreinforced and reinforced. The smeared cracking model is limited to static problems with no load reversals, i.e. structures subjected to monotonic loads. In tension the model is based on nonlinear fracture mechanics while its compressive behavior is based on a simple elasticplastic theory (Hibbit et al., 2009). 2.1.1 Theory

Cracking The smeared crack approach assumes that a crack in the concrete is composed by a number of micro cracks instead of a large discrete macro crack. The discrete approach demands a new mesh for each step of the calculation when a crack starts to develop and as it propagates, this approach requires a lot of computational power. In a smeared crack the material is softened perpendicular to the crack direction, which means that the original mesh can be kept and instead the material stiness is reduced. Because of the reduced stiness, the material transfers less stress, as the crack develops further the material stiness continues to degrade until it reaches zero. At this point no stress can be transferred and the crack propagates further without the stress (Hibbit et al., 2009).

A crack initiates when the principal stress reaches the ultimate tensile strength of the concrete. The crack growth direction is determined by the principal stress direction at crack initiation. As the crack grows further this direction is kept even though the principal stress direction may change, as a result shear stresses are induced on the crack surface. This approach is called a xed crack model (Cervenka et al., 2010). ABAQUS uses a crack detection surface to determine when the ultimate tensile or compressive strength is reached. Due to the reduction of the material stiness when a crack opens, the material will also get a reduced shear stiness. The ability of an open crack to transfer shear stresses is due to the interlocking of aggregate. When the crack width exceeds the average aggregate size, the crack is considered to no longer transfer any shear stress. The material model deals with this eect by introducing a post crack shear behavior, called shear retention. This behavior is a linear function of the crack strain, which reduces the shear modulus from its fully elastic value to zero (Hibbit et al., 2009). Uniaxial behavior The uniaxial behavior can be divided into two parts, tensile and compressive behavior. See Fig. 1 for the uniaxial behavior.
Stress Failure point in compression (peak stress)

Start of inelastic failure

Unload/reload response Idealized (elastic) unload/reload response Strain Cracking failure Softening

Figure 1: Uniaxial behavior (Hibbit et al., 2009). The tensile behavior is linear elastic up to the point of failure which is dened by the concrete tensile strength; this is the rst stage of the tensile behavior. The next stage is called tension softening and describes the transformation of micro cracks to macro cracks. During the formation of micro cracks the material stiness will gradually degrade until it reaches zero and a macro crack is formed, as mentioned above. In the concrete smeared cracking model, the tension softening can be described by a stressstrain or stressdisplacement relationship. 5

These relationships describe the amount of fracture energy required to open a stress free unit area of a crack. The third and last stage of the tensile behavior is reached when the crack becomes stress free. In this stage the crack continues to open without any stress. If the load changes from tensile to compressive, no compression strength is lost even though a crack has opened, i.e. the crack closes completely. The concrete exhibits a linear elastic behavior in compression until it reaches its yield stress. At that point some plastic straining occurs and the material behavior becomes nonlinear. This nonlinear behavior is due to bond failure between the aggregate and the cement paste which starts to occur at stress levels of 7075 % of the ultimate concrete strength (Malm, 2006). After the ultimate strength is reached, the strain continues to increase while the strength is reduced until the concrete cannot carry any more stress. In reality the unloading response of the concrete is softer beyond the inelastic point than the elastic response. In the model this eect is neglected and the normal elastic response is used during unloading. Multiaxial behavior The multiaxial behavior of the concrete is described by a simplied yield surface tted to experimental data. The experimental data is tted with an exponential associated ow rule in the deviatoric plane, see Fig. 2, which results in an inaccurate surface. Normally the inelastic volume strain is over predicted by the associated ow assumption. To overcome this drawback the third stress invariant would be needed i.e. a yield volume. The model contains even more assumptions but no attempts have been made to overcome them because the accuracy of the model is considered to be enough. Another reason is to keep the computational eciency. The yield surface can be seen in Fig. 3 (Hibbit et al., 2009).

-pt
Figure 2: Exponential plastic ow rule (Hibbit et al., 2009).

2
Uniaxial compression Uniaxial tension Biaxial tension

Biaxial compression

Figure 3: Yield surface in the deviatoric plane (Hibbit et al., 2009).

2.1.2

Dening the material model

To dene the model a number of input parameters have to be assigned in ABAQUS; some of these are optional. Below follows a description of the dierent parameters and suggestions are given on how to calculate them according to the CEB-FIP Model Code 90. The only input parameter needed is the cube strength fcu . Another way, and often a better, is to use experimental data of the current concrete to dene the input parameters. Parameter Initial elastic modulus Poissons ratio Compressive cylinder strength Strain at fc Plastic softening compression Tensile strength Fracture energy Gf Crack opening displacement Equation Ec = (600 15.5fcu ) fcu = 0.2 fc = 0.85fcu c0 = 2fc /Ec wd = 5 104 2/3 ft = 0.24fcu Gf = 25 106 ft wc = 5.14Gf /ft Unit MPa MPa m MPa Nm/m2 m

Table 1: Equations for input parameters (Malm, 2006).

Elastic behavior The elastic behavior of the concrete is dened by the linear elastic model in ABAQUS. This model is separate from the concrete smeared

cracking but is mandatory in order to get a working material model. Input data is Youngs modulus Ec and the Poissons ratio according to above. Concrete smeared cracking The compressive behavior is dened by the yield stress as a function of the plastic strain and specied in ABAQUS as tabular data. The rst row of the table is dened by the point where the concrete starts to exhibit a nonlinear behavior (plastic straining). According to Malm (2006), the stress at this point can be estimated as 30% of the ultimate compressive strength fc . Note that the plastic strain at this point must be zero in ABAQUS. The remaining points up to fc are given by Eq. (1), where the user selects the number of points to describe the compressive behavior depending on the desired accuracy. kx x2 1 + (k 2)x

c = fc

(1)

x=

c0

(1a)

where c is the concrete compressive stress, fc is the concrete compressive strength, x is the normalized strain, is the strain, c0 is the strain at peak stress and k is a shape parameter which depends on initial elastic modulus and the secant elastic modulus at peak stress. For k = 2 the shape is parabolic and for k = 1 the shape is linear. To calculate the plastic strain pl at the chosen points Eq. (2) is used: pl = c Ec (2)

After the ultimate strength, the behavior can be considered linear to a point where the stress is zero and the strain c calculated according to Eq. (3). c = c0 + wd L (3)

where wd is the plastic softening compression and L is the nite element length. As seen in Eq. (3), c is dependent on the element size. In other words, if the mesh is changed, a new value for c has to be calculated. A satisfactory approximation for c is 0.01 for normal concrete. The tensile behavior is dened by the tension stiening suboption in ABAQUS. The tension stiening can either be dened as stressstrain or stressdisplacement. Up to the ultimate tensile strength ft the tensile behavior is dened by the elastic behavior of the concrete and no input for ft has to be given.

If the stressstrain alternative is chosen the input for tension stiening can be dened for multiple points. The input needed for each point in ABAQUS is the ratio between current stress and ft and the absolute value of the dierence between the current strain and the strain at cracking. The tension stiening can be calculated by an exponential crack opening law according to Cornelissen et al. (1986). Note that the crack opening displacement has to be divided by the nite element length to obtain the strain which is the input parameter in ABAQUS: w = f (w) f (wc ) ft wc where f (w) is a displacement function given by c1 w wc
3

(4)

f (w) =

1+

exp

c2 w wc

(4a)

where w is the crack opening displacement, wc is the crack opening displacement at which stress no longer can be transfered, c1 is a material constant (c1 = 3.0 for normal density concrete) and c2 is a material constant (c2 = 6.93 for normal density concrete). If the stressdisplacement alternative is chosen, only one point can be dened for the tension stiening, in that case a linear crack opening law is used. The only input is the crack opening displacement at which stress no longer can be transferred and is calculated as: wc = 2Gf ft (5)

It is recommended to use the stressdisplacement alternative to avoid mesh sensitivity in regions that lack reinforcement. Another reason to use this approach is that the tensile behavior does not need to be redened if the mesh is changed, which is the case for the stressstrain alternative (Malm, 2006). The aforementioned yield surface is dened by the four input parameters, described in the list below, in the failure ratio suboption in ABAQUS. If these parameters are not specied, ABAQUS will use default values (Hibbit et al., 2009). Failure ratio 1 is the ratio between the ultimate biaxial compressive strength and the ultimate uniaxial strength. Default value is 1.16. Failure ratio 2 is the ratio between the uniaxial tensile strength and the ultimate uniaxial compressive strength, i.e. ft /fc . Default value is 0.09. Failure ratio 3 is the ratio between the principal plastic strain at ultimate biaxial compression to the plastic strain at ultimate uniaxial compression. Default value is 1.28.

 Failure ratio 4 is the ratio between the tensile principal stress at cracking in plane stress and the tensile cracking stress under uniaxial tension. Default value is 1/3. Shear retention is an optional input that describes how the shear stiness is aected by cracking. The shear modulus is assumed to decrease linearly to zero as the crack opens. Two input variables needs to be dened in this suboption. The rst is close which describes the amount of shear retention when a crack closes. This value is often set to 1.0 which means no loss in shear capacity for a closed crack. The other parameter is max which describes the strain when all shear capacity is lost, a reasonable value is 103 according to Hibbit et al. (2009). If the shear retention is not dened, ABAQUS assumes full shear retention, i.e. no shear capacity is lost when the concrete cracks. An omission of the shear retention may, according to Malm (2006), lead to convergence diculties as well as unrealistic and distorted crack patterns.

2.2

Concrete damaged plasticity

The concrete damage plasticity model can be used to model all types of concrete structures, both unreinforced and reinforced. It can also be used to model other quasi-brittle materials such as soils. The model can be used to analyze structures subjected to monotonic, cyclic and dynamic loading. For both tension and compression, the model is based on a coupled damage plasticity theory. 2.2.1 Theory

Uniaxial behavior As for the smeared crack model, described in section 2.1, the uniaxial behavior for the concrete damage plasticity can be divided into a tensile and a compressive part. The tensile behavior is linear elastic up to the ultimate tensile strength of the concrete. As the strain increases the model uses a tension softening response to describe how the formation of micro cracks aects the concrete at a macroscopical level. This response can be described by a stressstrain or stress displacement function or by simply dening the fracture energy Gf needed to open a unit area of a crack. After the tension softening the crack continues to open without transferring any stress (Hibbit et al., 2009). In compression the behavior of the concrete damage plasticity model resembles that of the smeared cracking model. First, the behavior is linear elastic after which the material starts to lose its stiness and the behavior becomes nonlinear. The loss of stiness is due to bond failure between the aggregate and the cement paste. After the ultimate compressive strength the strain continues to increase while the stress decreases; this phase is called softening (Hibbit et al., 2009). Multiaxial behavior The yield surface used in the concrete damage plasticity model was developed by Lubliner et al. (1989) and later modied by Lee and Fenves (1998), see Fig. 4.

10

Crack detection surface

2
Uniaxial tension Biaxial tension

Uniaxial compression

Compression surface

Biaxial compression

Figure 4: Yield surface (Hibbit et al., 2009). The concrete damage plasticity model uses a DruckerPrager hyperbolic plastic potential function, which is a non-associated ow rule. This means that the plastic ow potential and the yield surface use separate functions and that the plastic ow develops in normal direction to the plastic ow potential. The plastic ow potential can be seen in Fig. 5.
Hardening

d p q

Hyperbolic Drucker-Prager flow potenial

Figure 5: Hyperbolic plastic ow rule (Hibbit et al., 2009).

11

The evolution of the yield surface is governed by an isotropic hardening model which depends on the plastic ow potential through the plastic ow. Cyclic/dynamic loading As mentioned above, the concrete damage plasticity model can also be used to analyze structures subjected to cyclic and dynamic loads. This ability is incorpareted into the model by using scalar damage parameters which reduces the stiness of the concrete in either compression or tension. To account for plastic strains that concrete exhibits during unloading, due to the micro cracks, the damage has to be coupled with the plasticity of the concrete. This is done as, (Hibbit et al., 2009): t = (1 dt ) Ec t pl t c = (1 dc ) Ec c pl c (6)

(7)

where dt is the tension damage parameter, dc is the compression damage parameter and pl is the equivalent plastic strains. A typical load cycle is depicted in Fig. 6. If the load changes from tension to compression, the concrete compressive stiness is fully recovered as the crack closes. In the opposite case, compression to tension, the tensile stiness will not be recovered if crushing micro cracks has developed. This is the default behavior of the material model, and is shown in Fig. 6, but it can be modied through the use of stiness recovery factors (Hibbit et al., 2009).
t

ft 0

E0

(1 dt ) E0 (1 d c ) E0 (1 dt )(1 d c ) E0

E0

Figure 6: Uniaxial load cycle (Hibbit et al., 2009).

12

2.2.2

Dening the material model

As for the smeared crack model, the material model is dened through a number of parameters in ABAQUS. The proposed formulas and values in Tab. 1 on page 7 are recommended to use when dening this material model. Elastic behavior The elastic behavior of the concrete is dened by the linear elastic model in ABAQUS. This model is separate from the concrete damage plasticity but is mandatory in order to get a working material model. Input data is Youngs modulus Ec and the Poissons ratio according to Tab. 1. Density To perform a dynamic analysis or use the ABAQUS/Explicit solver, the density of the concrete has to be dened. As for the elastic behavior, the density is dened in a separate material model. A typical value for concrete is 2400 kg/m3 . Concrete damaged plasticity The dilation angle is used, in ABAQUS, to calculate the plastic ow potential. A dilation angle close to the materials friction angle, for concrete max = 56.3 which also is the upper limit, results in a ductile behavior. On the other hand a low value, close to 0 , results in a very brittle behavior. The eect of the dilation angle for values between the upper and the lower limit (10 40 ) is almost negligible (Malm, 2006). For normal concrete structures a value around 30 gives results with a sucient accuracy. According Lovn and Rosengren (2009) the dilation angle should be set to the material friction angle when analyzing deep beams in plane stress as a lower angle will underestimate the strength of the deep beam. The ow potential eccentricity denes the rate at which the plastic potential function approaches the asymptote, see Fig. 5. If no experimental data is available it should be set to the ABAQUS default value 0.1. The ratio fb0 /fc0 is the ratio between the initial biaxial compressive yield stress and the initial uniaxial compressive yield stress. The default value in ABAQUS is 1.16. The multiaxial behavior of the material model is dened by the input parameterKc , which has to be set to a value in the range of 0.5 < Kc 1. The default value in ABAQUS is 2/3 and is the recommended value to use. The viscosity parameter is used to help to accomplish a good convergence in ABAQUS/Standard analyses. If no input is given, the viscoplastic regularization is ignored. The value should be small compared to the characteristic time increment. A reasonable value is = 107 which is used in analyses by Malm (2006). The compressive behavior is dened in the same manner as for the concrete smeared cracking model. But in the concrete damage plasticity model the inelastic strains are used instead of the plastic strains. The inelastic strain is the same as the plastic strain in the smeared crack model and therefore the same behavior can be used, Eq. (1). The plastic strain in the damage plasticity model

13

is used to describe the permanent strain after unloading and is dependent on the damage parameter. In the absence of damage the plastic and inelastic strains are equal. The compressive damage parameter dc can be dened linearly dependent on the inelastic strain in the range 0 < dc 0.99. A recommended max value is 0.9 to account for aggregate interlocking and similar eects. If no cyclic or dynamic loads are expected, the damage suboption can be omitted. The tension stiness recovery factor describes how much of the tensile strength that remains after crushing, when the load changes to tension. The default value is 0 which agrees with the actual behavior of concrete. The tensile behavior can be dened as either stressstrain, stressdisplacement or stressfracture energy. For plain concrete, the tensile behavior can be described by tension softening and the stressdisplacement alternative is recommended. The behavior can be dened by Eq. (4) developed by Cornelissen et al. (1986). With a suciently ne mesh the tension softening can just as well be dened linearly, Eq. (4). For a coarse mesh, the crack opening is much better described by using the equation by Cornelissen et al.. The tension damage parameter dt must be in the range 0 < dt 0.99 but as for the compressive damage a maximum value of 0.9 is recommended. It should be dened with the same shape as the tension softening but mirrored, i.e. the maximum damage ought to occur when a stress free crack is obtained. If cyclic or dynamic loads are not present, the tension damage parameter is not necessary to dene. However, the tension damage parameter is a good way to visualize the crack pattern and propagation. Therefore, it is recommended to dene this parameter in a static analysis. The compression stiness recovery factor describes how much of the compressive strength that is recovered after crack closure. The default value is 1.0, which corresponds well with the actual behavior of concrete.

2.3

Reinforcement

There are many dierent ways of modeling reinforcement in ABAQUS; for example as smeared reinforcement in the concrete, as cohesive elements, with a builtin rebar layer which is available in certain element types and as discrete truss or beam elements with the embedded region constraint. All the analyses in this study will use the embedded region alternative and therefore this section will only explain how to model reinforcement in this manner. The material is dened as an ideal elastoplastic material, i.e. no hardening behavior. This is done by using the elastic and plastic material models in ABAQUS. The input parameters should be set according to the reinforcement used in the structure. The required input parameters are Youngs modulus, Poissons ratio and the yield strength. Normally it is sucient to model the reinforcement with truss elements, for which the only input parameter needed is the crosssectional area of the reinforcement. The benet of beam elements is that they can account for the dowel eect, which only gives a small increase of the load capacity in the structure. As the beam elements require more input parameters and also more computational power this alternative is not recommended. 14

This way of modeling the reinforcement does not include the bond slip eect between the concrete and the reinforcement. Instead these eects are included in the tension stiening behavior of the concrete material models described in sections 2.1 and 2.2 (Hibbit et al., 2009). When modeling the embedded region in ABAQUS with normal reinforcement bars the default constraint values has been used in this study.

FEM-modeling of concrete with ABAQUS

FEM modeling of concrete is associated with many diculties as the analysis has to be nonlinear. Hence, the user should be familiar with nite element analysis theory and the program to be used for the actual analysis. If the user is new to ABAQUS the recommendation is to go through the Getting Started with ABAQUS: Interactive Edition in the ABAQUS documentation (Hibbit et al., 2009) which introduces the user to the basics of ABAQUS. This section will cover some of the modeling diculties associated with concrete analysis in ABAQUS and guidance on how to overcome them.

3.1

Modeling aspects

The concrete material models are dened in section 2 and should be read carefully before starting the analysis. How to model the interaction between concrete and reinforcement is also described in the aforementioned section. More information about the material models is given in the ABAQUS documentation (Hibbit et al., 2009) which also describes a third concrete material model included in ABAQUS, concrete brittle cracking. The loading can be dened as either a force or a forced displacement. All the analyses in this study are performed with the displacement method of applying loads. The reason is that this method allows the analyst to observe the post failure behavior of the structure. When using the force approach the analysis will be aborted when the structure reaches its collapse load. To reduce stress concentrations in the concrete at the load application points, steel load plates can be used. ABAQUS oers the user many dierent solution algorithms, called step functions. The most commonly used nonlinear solution schemes for concrete modeling are the Static/General and Static/Riks. The Static/General can either be dened as a load controlled or displacement controlled solution method depending on how the load is dened. Static/Riks is an arc length method suitable for problems including snap back behavior. The recommendation is to use as simple elements as possible. In this article all the presented analyses are performed with linear elements.

15

3.2

Convergence problems

When modeling and analyzing reinforced concrete, convergence problems will often occur in ABAQUS during the solution. There are many dierent ways to handle these problems and some of them are presented below. The time increment parameters should always, when analyzing concrete with the Static/General time step, be set to lower values than the default values in ABAQUS. As an eect of this, the maximum number of time increments has to be increased. The reason to this is the need to allow a more accurate solution at points when cracking occurs. Convergence problems can arise if the reinforcement nodes coincide with the concrete element nodes. These convergence problems occur because the high stresses in the reinforcement heavily distort the less sti material elements. To avoid this, reinforcement should be placed where it does not coincide with any other material element node. Another way of handle convergence problems is to introduce automatic stabilization in the time steps. According to results in Malm and Ansell (2008) this stabilization does not interfere with the concrete behavior and is therefore an effective way of handling convergence problems. The automatic stabilization can be turned on in the Edit step window in ABAQUS. In this study the Specify dissipated energy fraction option with default values is used. The default value for the automatic stabilization is 0.0002 and for the adaptive stabilization with maximum ratio of stabilization to strain energy is 0.05. If convergence problems still are present, the number of iterations and the tolerance in the general solution control for the load time step can be changed (Malm, 2006). The recommended parameters to change are:
Rn

Default value is 0.005. Use a higher value to avoid convergence problems. In this study values up to 0.1 have been used. Default value is 4 and can be increased to 34 times the default value. Default value is 8 and can be increased to 34 times the default value. Default value is 4 and can be increased to 34 times the default value.

I0 IR IA

If the aforementioned measures to avoid convergence problems do not help, there are still some material model specic measures that can be implemented. The tension stiening/softening can aect the convergence. A too low fracture energy can cause unstable behavior which abort the solution premature. By setting a higher fracture energy than the actual one in the concrete, the solution may converge. However, dening a higher fracture energy than the actually one alters the quality of the concrete and therefore the solution may not be relevant. In the concrete smeared cracking model an incorrect shear retention factor may result in distorted and unrealistic crack patterns. A more accurate denition of 16

the shear retention factor may therefore help the solution to converge. A major drawback with the smeared cracking model is the fact that the shear retention may only be dened as linearly dependent on the strains. A more accurate way to describe the shear retention, is to use an exponential function as the one used in the SBETA material model in ATENA, Cervenka et al. (2010). According to section 2.2, the viscosity parameter in the concrete damaged plasticity model can be used to help the solution to converge. If none of the above mentioned measures result in a converged solution, the concrete damaged plasticity model can be used with the ABAQUS/Explicit solver. ABAQUS/Explicit is a dynamic solver which uses a central dierences scheme to solve the problem. Because the solver account for dynamic eects the load has to be applied with low speed to make the dynamic eects negligible for a static problem.

Verication of material models

When using the material models for complex structures it is dicult to determine whether the behavior of the models can describe the actual behavior of concrete in a satisfactory way. Therefore it is recommended to verify the material models against examples, for which analytical solutions easily can be obtained or for which experimental data is known. In this section the behavior of the material models described in the previous section will be examined and veried through a couple of examples that analyze dierent aspects of the material behavior.

4.1

Cube test

In this example, the biaxial compressive behavior of the material models will be examined. This will be made by subjecting a threedimensional cube to a uniform biaxial compressive pressure. The dimensions of the cube are shown in Fig. 7 and a concrete of quality C25/30 will be used. The material models are dened according to section 2.

17

[mm]

150

t = 150

150
Figure 7: Cube A uniform biaxial pressure is obtained by constraining three of the sides against translation in their normal directions and applying a forced displacement onto the fourth side as shown in the Fig. 7. The two other sides are free to deform. For both material models the biaxial compressive strength is dened as fb = 1.18fc which corresponds to the cube strength, 30 MPa, of the chosen concrete. The load deformation curve from the FEM analysis is shown in Fig. 8. For the concrete smeared cracking model the compressive failure occurred at a load of 31.8 MPa. When the same analysis was carried out with the concrete damaged plasticity model the compressive failure occurred for a load of 30.8 MPa.

18

[MPa]
35.

30.

25.

Pressure

20.

15.

10.

5.

0. 0.00

0.05

0.10

0.15

0.20

0.25 [mm]

Displacement

Concrete Damaged Plasticity Concrete Smeared Cracking

Figure 8: Load deformation curve The calculated biaxial compressive strength from both material models is close enough to the expected results. The two material models show a slightly dierent behavior even though the compressive material behavior is dened from the same equation. An explanation to this dierence is probably the dierent biaxial failure surfaces of the two material models shown in section 2 since tensile stresses will occur in the unconstrained direction.

4.2

Unreinforced concrete beam

To examine the tensile behavior of the concrete material models, analyses of a unreinforced beam are made. The beam has dimensions according to Fig. 9 and will be subjected to a point load at its mid span. A concrete of quality C25/30 was used in the analyses. To be able to observe the post failure behavior, the point load will be represented by a forced displacement. The crack patterns obtained from the analyses can be seen in Fig 10.

P
[mm] 100 t = 150

50

350 800

Figure 9: Unreinforced beam 19

Figure 10: Crack pattern from all analyses The same crack pattern was obtained with all material models; concrete smeared cracking with linear tension stiening and concrete damaged plasticity with both linear and exponential tension stiening. As can be seen in Fig. 10, a distinct exural crack was received from the analyses, which corresponds well with the expected result. The loaddisplacement curves from the analyses can be seen in Fig. 11.
[kN]
3.5

3.0

2.5

Force

2.0 First crack appears 1.5

1.0

0.5

0.0 0.0

0.05

0.10

0.15

0.20

0.25

0.30 [mm]

Displacement

CDP Linear Tension Sti ening CDP Cornelisen Tension Sti ening CSC Linear Tension Sti ening

Figure 11: Loaddisplacement curves The rst crack shown in Fig. 11 is calculated with Naviers formula and is considered to appear as the rst part of the beam reaches its ultimate tensile strength. As can be seen, the analyses show an overcapacity compared to the calculated rst crack. This is probably due to the dened tension softening of the material models. Which implies that the concrete still has a tensile capacity after the ultimate tensile strength is reached.

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4.3

Unreinforced concrete axle subjected to torsion

To observe whether the material models can account for the crack pattern created by a torsional load an unreinforced concrete axle will be analyzed. The axle is made of concrete with quality C25/30, has a radius of 0.5 m and is 1 m long. Both end surfaces of the axle are constrained in all degrees of freedom except the rotation around the longitudinal direction of the axle. These degrees of freedom are rotated in opposite direction to represent the torsional load. The aim of this analysis is not to observe the point of failure but rather to see if the material models can handle the crack pattern due to torsion. The expected crack pattern for a structure subjected to a torsional load is cracks that propagate in an angle of 45 to the rotational axis. The torsional moment is carried through shear stresses, which for a circular member reaches its maximum at the surface of the member. If the torsional moment is the only loading, all other stresses, except the shear stress, are zero. This results in a principal tensile stress and a principal compressive stress of equal magnitude. The equal principal stresses result in a principal direction of 45 to the rotational axis. When the principal tensile stress eventually reaches the ultimate tensile strength of the concrete, cracks will initiate and spiral around the axle in the principal direction (Wight and MacGregor, 2009).

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(a) Concrete smeared cracking with linear tension stiening

(b) Concrete damaged plasticity with linear tension stiening

(c) Concrete damaged plasticity with tension stiening according to Cornelissen et al. 1986 Figure 12: Crack patterns of axle subjected to torsion 22

The crack pattern from the three analyses can be seen in Fig. 12. The crack pattern obtained with the concrete smeared cracking model is in good agreement with the expected result, as the crack pattern spirals around the axle at an angle of approximately 45 . The two analyses made with the concrete damaged plasticity model do not agree with the expected result; although the cracks seem to spiral around the axle, the angle to the rotational axis is far from 45 . For a comparison of the load response of the dierent material models, see Fig. 13.
[kNm]
80.

60.

Moment

40.

20.

0. 0.0

0.5

1.0

1.5

2.0

Angle
CDP Linear Tension Sti ening CSC Linear Tension Sti ening

[mRadians] CDP Cornelisen Tension Sti ening

Figure 13: Moment-angle curves

4.4

Reinforced concrete beam

To study and verify the interaction between the concrete material models and reinforcement in ABAQUS, a reinforced concrete beam will be analyzed. To keep the focus on the torsional behavior of concrete, a beam that fails because of shear cracks was chosen for this verication analysis. A number of beams exhibiting such a behavior were tested by Leonhardt and Walter (1962) to determine their maximum shear stress capacity. The beam referred to as beam 5 in Leonhardt and Walter was chosen for this verication example. The beam has earlier been examined by both Malm (2006) and Cervenka (2001) among others and hence there are a lot of results to compare with. The dimensions of the beam are shown in Fig. 14. The concrete material parameters were calculated from a cube strength of 33.5 MPa but with a tensile strength of 1.64 MPa according to Malm (2006) and Cervenka (2001). The reinforcement is composed of two 26 bars with a Youngs modulus of 200 GPa, Possions ratio of 0.3 and a yield stress of 500 MPa. The material behavior of the steel is assumed to be ideal elasticplastic.

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P
t = 190

P
[mm]

As = 1066 mm2 50 300 810 330 810 300

Figure 14: Leonhardts beam 5. The result from the experiments in Leonhardt and Walter (1962) show an ultimate load of 58.9 kN with a mid deection of 2.57 mm. The results from the present nite element analysis are shown in Fig. 15.
[kN]
60.

50.

40.

Force

30.

20.

10.

0. 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0

Displacement

CDP Cornelisen Tension Sti ening CDP Linear Tension Sti ening CSC Linear Tension Sti ening

Figure 15: Loaddisplacement curves. The concrete smeared cracking model gives an ultimate load of 65.5 kN and a mid deection of 2.4 mm. An ultimate load of 59.5 kN is reached with the concrete damaged plasticity model using linear tension stiening and at the point of failure the mid deection is 2.5 mm. The same material model but with tension stiening according to Cornelissen et al. fails at 45 kN with a mid deection of 1.8 mm. The concrete smeared cracking model shows good agreement with the experimental results, but it tends to be a bit too sti. When comparing with the results from Leonhardt and Walter (1962), the concrete damaged plasticity model with linear tension stiening corresponds best of the material models and agrees very well the experimental results. The analysis made with tension stiening according to Cornelissen et al. reaches its point of failure to early and the response is too soft, which also was found in previous verication examples.

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320
[mm]

(a) Concrete smeared cracking with linear tension stiening

(b) Concrete damaged plasticity with linear tension stiening

(c) Concrete damaged plasticity with tension stiening according to Cornelissen et al. 1986 Figure 16: Crack patterns for the reinforced concrete beam. The crack patterns from the analyses can be seen in Fig. 16. According to the experiments the beam should fail due to shear stresses and the main crack should propagate towards to the load point in an angle of approximately 45 . As can be seen in Fig. 16(a) the concrete smeared cracking model cannot capture this crack and this is probably the reason to the too sti behavior of the model. Both concrete damaged plasticity models capture this crack very well. The underestimation by the concrete damaged plasticity model with Cornelissen et al. tension stiening, might be explained by Fig. 15(c). Were it can be seen that the shear crack occur without presence of any exural cracks, as in Fig. 15(b). This means that less strain engery has been consumed as fracture engery when the beam fails, i.e. an underestimation of the result.

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Conclusions

Modeling reinforced concrete using the nite element method can be very difcult. It is important that the analyst not only have good knowledge about FEM, but also about concrete as a material to be able to dene the material models in the FEM software. The input parameters used to dene the material models often have no theoretical origin, but are rather results from experiments. It is therefore necessary to gather the required knowledge about the parameters and to understand the eect they have on the material model before using it in an analysis. Even the smallest erroneousness in one input parameter, can develop into large errors in the analysis due to the complex interaction between the parameters. Diculties do not only arise when dening the material models, but also due to some technicalities in the FEM itself. The most important diculties that have been encountered in this study are presented in section 3. Some of these are associated with the concrete material models in ABAQUS, and some of them can be encountered when using the FEM in general. It is important to be observant when one starts to alter parameters to overcome convergence problems. Otherwise it is easy to obtain a solution which is no longer relevant for the given problem. When performing analyses with the smeared cracking model in ABAQUS, it was dicult to obtain converging solutions; especially for complex reinforced concrete structures. The convergence and the result of the analyses were very dependent on the type and size of the element used. The only element that showed good convergence with the smeared cracking model was the four node element with reduced integration (CPS4R) and enhanced hourglass control turned on. Even with this element, the computational time was almost 10 times that of the analyses made with the concrete damaged plasticity model. The material model also shows a too sti response compared with experimental results. This behavior is often observed for concrete material models based on fracture mechanics and is of course problematic in engineering applications. Also the enhanced hourglass control may contribute to the too sti behavior. A further drawback is that the material model cannot capture shear cracks; this is probably due to the xed crack approach and the crack detection method. Further, the material model cannot observe the post failure behavior for reinforced concrete structures; instead it stops shortly after the point of failure. The strength of the concrete smeared cracking model is the easy to understand input parameters, which are closely linked to normally used concrete parameters. In conclusion, the smeared cracking model is easy to dene but it is hard to get a relevant and converging solution. Therefore, it is recommended to use this material model only in analyses of simple concrete structures. Analyses made with the concrete damaged plasticity material model in ABAQUS, in most cases, shows good and fast convergence. The analyses also show results that correspond well with experimental data. The major drawback of the material model is that some of the input parameters have no counterparts in the normal material science of concrete; for example the dilation angle and the eccentricity used to dene the plastic ow. But an advantage is that most of the material parameters can be chosen relatively free, in comparison with the smeared cracking model. This study showed that if the tensile behavior was dened according to Cornelissen et al. (1986), the structure reached the point 26

of failure to early, i.e. a too low failure load. In other studies, for example Malm (2006), it has been shown that this tensile behavior is the best and most accurate way to describe the tension softening in the concrete. Instead this study found that a linear crack opening law was most accurate. The concrete damaged plasticity model has no trouble to observe the post failure behavior and to visualize the numerous crack patterns that can occur in a concrete structure. In summary, the concrete damaged plasticity model is a very powerful analysis tool. It can handle many dierent load cases, including cyclic loading, and complex structures. It is also possible to use the ABAQUS/Explicit solver with this material model, which enables that a solution always can be obtained. Hence, the concrete damaged plasticity model is the recommended model to use for analysis of all type of concrete structures. Even though the concrete smeared cracking model captures the torsional crack pattern better than the concrete damaged plasticity model; the authors still recommend to use the concrete damaged plasticity model for structures subjected to torsional loading. This is because of the severe convergence problems associated with the concrete smeared cracking model. Although, the analyses made with the concrete damaged plasticity model in the scope of this study were not able to capture the correct crack pattern. The model succeeds in capturing shear cracks and should therefore also be able to describe torsional cracks.

5.1

Further research

Although the concrete damaged plasticity shows good agreement with experimental results there are still a lot of eects, such as the bonding interaction between the concrete and the reinforcement, that can be improved. Therefore it is necessary to investigate other concrete material models and other ways to model the reinforcement if very accurate results are required. There are very few papers about torsion of reinforced concrete members and it is therefore a subject that needs further research.

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References
CEB-FIP, 1993. Ceb-p model code 1990. Thomas Telford Ltd. Cervenka, J., May 2001. Atena program documentation part 4-1 Tutorial for progaram ATENA 2D. Prague. Cervenka, V., Jendele, L., Cervenka, J., 2010. ATENA Program Documentation - Part 1 Theory. Prague. Cornelissen, H., Hodijk, D., Reinhardt, H., 1986. Experimental determination of crack softening characteristics of normal weigth and lightweigth conrete. Heron 31 (2), . Hibbit, H., Karlsson, B., Sorensen, E., 2009. Abaqus 6.9 Online Documentation. Dassault Systmes. Lee, J., Fenves, G., 1998. Plastic-damage model for cyclic loading of concrete structures. Journal of engineering mechanics, ASCE 124 (8), 892900. Leonhardt, F., Walter, R., 1962. Schubversuche an einfeldrigen stahlbetonbalken mit und ohne schubbewehrung. Deutscher suschuss fr stahlbeton 151, . Lovn, S. L., Rosengren, P., 2009. Design of deep concrete beams using strutand-tie, stress eld and nite element methods. Masters thesis, Royal institute of technology, Stockholm, Sweden. Lubliner, J., Oliver, J., Oller, S., Onate, E., 1989. A plastic-damage model for concrete. International journal of solids and structures 25 (3), 299326. Malm, R., 2006. Shear cracks in concrete structures subjected to in-plane stresses. Ph.D. thesis, Royla institute of technology, Stockholm, Sweden. Malm, R., Ansell, A., July 2008. Nonlinear analysis of thermally induced cracking of a concrete dam. ACI Structual Journal -, . Wight, J. K., MacGregor, J. G., 2009. Reinforced concrete mechanics and design, fth edition Edition. Pearson education.

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