Analysis of anchor bolt pullout in concrete by the element-free Galerkin method

In this study, analysis of anchor bolt pullout in plain concrete by the element-free Galerkin (EFG) method is presented. Two-dimensional plane stress pullout problems are considered. Two-dimensional pullout problems are mostly solved by the finite element method (FEM). Nevertheless, due to difficulties in the treatment of displacement discontinuities in FEM, crack paths are usually assumed in advance. Otherwise, adaptive remeshing is normally used. In this study, the EFG method is employed as an analysis tool in order to avoid these difficulties found in FEM. In the analysis, a cohesive curved crack is modeled by using interface line segments connected to form the crack. The interface line segments permit the constitutive law of cohesive cracks to be considered directly and efficiently. The stiffness equation of the domain is constructed by directly including a term related to the energy dissipation along the interface line segments in the EFG weak form of the global system equation. Using the interface line segments in the EFG method allows cracks to propagate virtually without any constraint on their directions. Consequently, analysis of anchor bolt pullout can be performed without remeshing or assuming crack paths in advance. The results obtained from this study are compared with finite element and experimental results reported in the literature and good agreement is observed.