Application Of Finite Element Method To Analysis Of Reinforced Concrete Frame Joint Experiments

The finite element method (FEM) is a powerful tool to simulate all kinds of structures. With the development of computer technology in recent years, it's possible to use FEM to simulate large and complicated structures. Applied FEM to civil engineering to analysis concrete material, it saves us a lot of time and energy to evaluate RC structures. But under reversed cyclic loading condition, there is still much work to do to simulate RC structures properly. Two different programs were tested in order to make some amendment suggestions. The suggestions may help writing new programs and deeper research. The author chose the experiment of joint under reversed cyclic loading to simulate and use VecTor2 and ANSYS to model the joint specimens separately. VecTor2 is FEM program developed especially for reinforced concrete structure. ANSYS is a commercial FEM program witch is capable of electromagnetic,thermal,structural,CFD etc. analysis. The results of simulation were compared to the experimental results. The two programs were compared too. The analysis results shows that VecTor2 is reliable to analysis RC structures under reversed cyclic loading. Concrete exhibit even complicated attributes when applied reversed cyclic loading. Model the specimens with more applicable model of reinforced bar,concrete and the bond relationship between the reinforcement and the concrete can surely improve the simulation precision. ANSYS provides coarse constitutive relationship especially coarse hysteretic model of concrete, compared to VecTor2, so the analytical results may not so satisfactory. But under the condition of monotonic type loading, ANSYS is reliable. Crack effect of concrete was suggested to promote the simulation of hystersis curve of RC members. Damage models were suggested to be used in simulating constitutive relationship of concrete.