LUSAS 18 Tutorial - Nonlinear Analysis of Concrete Beam (Part 1)

A nonlinear plane stress analysis is to be carried out on a model of a reinforced concrete beam. The reinforcement is provided in the lower face of the beam and has a total cross-sectional area of 400 mm2. The superposition of nodal degrees of freedom assumes that the concrete and reinforcement are perfectly bonded. It is assumed that the self-weight of the beam is negligible compared with the applied load and that the effects of any shear reinforcement can be ignored.
Due to the symmetrical nature of the problem, only the left-hand span of the beam is modelled. The beam is simply supported at the left-hand end with a symmetry support at the right-hand axis of symmetry. A concentrated vertical load is applied to the top of the beam 1200mm from the left-hand end. The concrete section is represented by plane stress (QPM8) elements, and the reinforcement bars are represented by bar (BAR3) elements. A nonlinear concrete cracking material model will be applied to the plane stress elements and a von Mises plastic material will be applied to the reinforcement bars.