Elastic‐to‐plastic strut‐and‐tie model for multianchorage zones

Abstract

The strut‐and‐tie model (STM) has been adopted as a preferred methodology for the design of disturbed regions; however, an aspect which has not yet been sufficiently cleared up is the serviceability behavior of structural concrete, especially with regard to the cracking prediction. 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 satisfy the compatibility and generate the adaptive EPSTM at each load step. 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 has been verified to be sufficiently accurate by comparing with testing results.