Nonlinear analysis of reinforced concrete beam with/without tension stiffening effect

The aim of this paper is to do materially nonlinear failure analysis of RC beam by using finite element method. In the finite element modeling, two different approaches and different tension stress–strain models with/without tension stiffening effect are used by considering two different mesh sizes. In the first approach, the material matrices of concrete and reinforcement are constructed separately, and then superimposed to obtain the element stiffness matrix. In the second approach, the reinforcement is assumed to be uniformly distributed throughout the beam. So, the beam is modeled as a single composite element with increasing the modulus of elasticity of concrete by considering the reinforcement ratio. For these two approaches, elastic-perfectly plastic stress–strain relationship is used for concrete in compression. For the concrete in tension, a stress–strain relationship with/without tension stiffening is used. It is concluded that the approaches and the models considered in this study can be effectively used in the materially nonlinear analysis of RC beams.