Elastic and inelastic analysis of reinforced concrete structures using the boundary element method

Abstract

A Direct Boundary Element formulation for elastic and inelastic analysis of two dimensional reinforced concrete structures has been presented in two parts. The first part deals with the extension of the Boundary Element Method to elastic analysis of two dimensional problems in reinforced concrete. An initial stress formulation with an iterative scheme has been used to tackle the problem of inhomogeneity introduced by the presence of steel reinforcement which is considered to be smeared over a definite area. The method is applied to the problem of stresses in anchorage zones of prestressed concrete members and singly reinforced beams. Further, it has been demonstrated that the same procedure can be used to solve problems where variation of thickness in the domain occurs. The results obtained compare favourably with FEM results.

In the second part of the paper, the extension of BEM for elastic-cracking analysis of reinforced concrete structures using initial stress formulation with incremental iterative procedure has been presented. Smeared crack concept and strength-based cracking criterion have been used. Yielding of steel is also considered. The method is applied to examples for which experimental and FEM results are available in the literature. Close agreement has been observed between the results of present analysis and existing ones.