A FINITE ELEMENT APPROACH USING EQUIVALENT PLANE RECTANGULAR TRUSS ELEMENT IN NONLINEAR ANALYSIS OF REINFORCED CONCRETE STRUCTURES

摘要

A new finite element approach described in this paper uses an equivalent plane rectangular truss element to replace the traditional plane rectangular element in the nonlinear analysis of reinforced concrete structures. The major advantage of this approach is the simplified finite element model with reduced degrees of freedom and without the need of using displacement functions. The new approach can also trace the formation, development, and location of cracks in the reinforced concrete structures. The results of numerical analyses of structural examples showed that this new approach gave satisfactory results to the engineering problems in comparison with those obtained using the more complicated FE package ANSYS8.0.