Finite element analysis and behaviour of pre-cracked reinforced concrete members in shear Available to Purchase

Reinforced concrete members may be subjected to cracking damage due to environmental attack and past loading. Recent experiments conducted by the authors show that the shear behaviour of pre-cracked beams differs greatly from the uncracked ones. In an uncracked beam, the shear failure is governed by a single diagonal crack. On the other hand, the shear failure of pre-cracked beams is governed by a mutual contribution of pre-crack and diagonal crack or by the pre-crack only. The behaviour of all the pre-cracked beams can be consistently explained by the concept of shear anisotropy along the pre-crack plane. The pre-cracked beam problem poses challenges to the numerical analysis of reinforced concrete members. The finite element method (FEM) is discussed in this paper. It is made clear that a crack model that can handle the pre-cracked beam problem must be able to record and transfer pre-crack and other state variables over load steps, treat multi-directional cracks with mutual interaction and treat shear anisotropy along the pre-crack plane. The four-way fixed crack approach is proposed for numerical analysis. The analysis target includes non-orthogonal two-way crack interaction, three-way crack interaction and crack interaction in which two cracks form an arbitrary angle.