NON-LINEAR ANALYSIS OF RC STRUCTURES WITH ABAQUS

摘要

The behaviour of reinforced concrete (RC) structures is highly inelastic when subjected to seismic loads. However, at present, the inelastic analysis of RC members using commercial finite element (FE) codes requires a large computational effort. Further, the concrete constitutive laws implemented in these codes can be numerically unstable. Consequently the modelling of RC frames can be at best prohibitively expensive and almost impossible for commercial purposes. Non-linear analysis techniques of RC structures in the research field have been the subject of intensive development over the last two decades. This paper describes the development and implementation of tools aimed to make available the aforementioned analysis techniques for efficient app-lications. The tools have been developed using the ABAQUS non-linear finite element (FE) code, as a framework for the FE analysis. EQE International ltd have developed a macro-model suitable for static to collapse analyses (I.e. Push-over), one of the most popular tools to assess the integrity and reliability of structures. This macro-model describes the inelastic behaviour of RC sections by means of a moment-curvature relationship for the section and minimises the computational effort required. The macro-model has been extensively validated against results of an independent FE code (Indyas, Elnashai et al.) and experimental test results. The validation exercise is still in process and the obtained comparison results are very encouraging.