Experimental and numerical analysis of cracks in the reinforced concrete pipes

Abstract

This article presents the analysis of the cracks in the tensile strength of concrete for reinforced concrete pipe crushing. Tensile strength, in case of crushing elements of high relative curvature, is significantly different from the strength of the not curved elements. The current state of research indicates that only methods of nonlinear fracture mechanics lead to a satisfactory agreement between the results of calculations and experimental studies, and allow for compiling correctly the influence of basic parameters of stretched concrete and geometrical dimensions on the load capacity of crush pipes made of concrete. Obtaining consistent results of experimental and numerical research is still a very complicated issue. This paper presents the results of an experimental test performed on three pipes and the numerical model of the analyzed element of the pipes made in the ATENA program. In order to model the concrete we used material model SBETA, proposed by ATENA. The numerical analyses of the cracks were compared with the results of experimental studies in this paper. The conducted experimental test indicate that the concrete tensile strength for the tested elements was higher than adopted. This resulted in a greater resistance of the cracking for the test elements.