Reinforced Concrete Crack Analysis

Reinforced concrete crack analysis

Due to rapid advances in the development of techniques for monitoring and retrofitting concrete, there is a need to revisit and generalise classical theories in order to better assess the strength of existing reinforced concrete (RC) structures and to inform the design of strengthening systems. An improved understanding of concrete cracking is an implicit requirement to achieve these aims. Cracking is a major deterioration mechanism when considering the durability and service life of concrete and it involves diverse phenomena such as the formation of cracks, crack propagation, the existence of micro-cracks, interactions between the reinforcement and the concrete, and the concrete microstructure. Over the past decades various models were developed to simulate the cracking process in reinforced concrete beams. These models can broadly be classified as plasticity based models which are justified in the case of ductile behaviour e.g. beams with sufficient internal steel, and fracture mechanics based models which do not treat fracture as a point phenomenon but use fracture mechanics principles to explain the crack propagation. This research seeks to identify the criteria that relates to the transition between these two perspectives and to generalize the modelling of the cracking process to explicitly include different reinforced concrete parameters.

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