Displacement control for the non‐linear analysis of reinforced concrete structures

This paper describes a comparison between displacement and load control for the non‐linear Finite element analysis of reinforced concrete structures. The analysis of three examples subjected to in‐plane loading using both the initial stiffness and the modified Newton‐Raphson methods with various tolerances is discussed. Two methods have been used in order to avoid spurious unloading in the displacement control method. The comparisons for the examples analysed show that the use of displacement control gives significant savings in computer time compared with that used for load control, in addition to being able to plot falling branch load‐deflection responses.