Steel-concrete bond-slip influence on behavior of RC structures

Abstract

In this paper, the authors present an embedded reinforced concrete finite element method which models the crack opening in concrete and takes into account the nonlinear bond slip behavior between reinforcement steel and concrete. It is based on a standard element in which the authors add degrees of freedom to allow the slip description. The cracking of the concrete is treated in the frame of incompatible modes method, with a displacement jump at the crack position. The bond slip is modeled with the Drucker-Prager law, to be able to take into account the influence of confinement over the friction. The authors show that the modeling of the bond slip behavior is necessary to predict the crack spacing and the crack opening in reinforced concrete structures under severe loading, such as fire, for example. This is important for deduced properties like leaks when there is interest in permeability, for example.