Unified Methodology for Strength and Stress Analysis of Structural Concrete Members

Abstract

Abstract In this paper, a methodology is presented for determining the stress and strain in structural concrete sections, also, for estimating the ultimate combination of axial forces and bending moments that produce failure. The structural concrete member may have a cross-section with an arbitrary configuration, the concrete region may consist of a set of subregions having different characteristics (i.e., different grades of concretes, or initially identical, but working with different stress-strain diagrams due to the effect of indirect reinforcement or the effect of confinement, etc.). This methodology is considering the tensile strain softening and tension stiffening of concrete in addition to the tension stiffening of steel bars due to the tensile resistance of the surrounding concrete layer. A comparison of experimental and numerical data indicates that the results, obtained based on this methodology, are highly reliable and highly informative.