A practical bond-based peridynamic modeling of reinforced concrete structures

Abstract Peridynamics has been increasingly used for the study of damage and failure behaviors of reinforced concrete (RC) structures, e.g., cracking, fragmentation, and interface debonding due to its strong capacity in analyzing discontinuous problems. This paper presents a practical bond-based peridynamics (BPD) modeling for simulating complicated nonlinear behaviors of RC structures. A novel coupled axial-shear interaction (ASI) bond-slip model is developed to simulate the relative slip and interface damages between the concrete and steel, while the complicated behaviors of concrete and steel are simulated using one-dimensional nonlinear material constitutive models. The BPD framework and the ASI algorithm are implemented in an open source finite element software OpenSees, allowing the advantage of its abundant nonlinear material libraries. The BPD modeling is verified by three application examples, i.e., a uniaxial tension and compression test of concrete specimens, a plain round steel bar pull-out test and a pushover analysis of an RC column, and cracking behaviors are analyzed. The results demonstrate the strong capacity of the enhanced BPD modeling in simulating the damage behavior for RC structures, e.g., the strength deterioration, stiffness degradation and pinch effect in the stress–strain response, as well as the crack developments and the bond-slips behaviors.