• Computers and Concrete
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• 제8권4호
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• pp.473-489
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• 2011

In designing a flexural member for structural safety, both the flexural strength and ductility have to be considered. For this purpose, the flexural ductility of reinforced concrete sections has been studied quite extensively. As there have been relatively few studies on the flexural ductility of prestressed concrete sections, it is not well understood how various structural parameters affect the flexural ductility. In the present study, the full-range flexural responses of reinforced and prestressed concrete sections are analyzed taking into account the nonlinearity and stress-path dependence of constitutive materials. From the numerical results, the effects of steel content, yield strength and degree of prestressing on the yield curvature and ultimate curvature are evaluated. It is found that whilst the concept of flexural ductility in terms of the ductility factor works well for reinforced sections, it can be misleading when applied to prestressed concrete sections. For prestressed concrete sections, the concept of flexural deformability in terms of ultimate curvature times overall depth of section may be more appropriate.

• Computers and Concrete
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• 제30권2호
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• pp.127-141
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• 2022

In this paper, a numerical procedure is proposed for achieving the minimum cost design of reinforced concrete polygonal column cross-sections under compression and biaxial bending. A methodology is developed to integrate the metaheuristic algorithm Quantum Particle Swarm Optimization (QPSO) with an algorithm for the evaluation of the strength of reinforced concrete cross-sections under combined axial load and biaxial bending, according to the design criteria of Brazilian Standard ABNT NBR 6118:2014. The objective function formulation takes into account the costs of concrete, reinforcement, and formwork. The cross-section dimensions, the number and diameter of rebar and the concrete strength are taken as discrete design variables. This methodology is applied to polygonal cross-sections, such as rectangular sections, rectangular hollow sections, and L-shaped cross-sections. To evaluate the efficiency of the methodology, the optimal solutions obtained were compared to results reported by other authors using conventional methods or alternative optimization techniques. An additional study investigates the effect on final costs for an alternative parametrization of rebar positioning on the cross-section. The proposed optimization method proved to be efficient in the search for optimal solutions, presenting consistent results that confirm the importance of using optimization techniques in the design of reinforced concrete structures.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제12권5호
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• pp.459-474
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• 2001

The complete moment-curvature curves of doubly reinforced concrete beams made of normal- or high-strength concrete have been evaluated using a newly developed analytical method that takes into account the stress-path dependence of the constitutive properties of the materials. From the moment-curvature curves and the strain distribution results obtained, the post-peak behavior and flexural ductility of doubly reinforced normal- and high-strength concrete beam sections are studied. It is found that the major factors affecting the flexural ductility of reinforced concrete beam sections are the tension steel ratio, compression steel ratio and concrete grade. Generally, the flexural ductility decreases as the amount of tension reinforcement increases, but increases as the amount of compression reinforcement increases. However, the effect of the concrete grade on flexural ductility is fairly complicated, as will be explained in the paper. Quantitative analysis of such effects has been carried out and a formula for direct evaluation of the flexural ductility of doubly reinforced concrete sections developed. The formula should be useful for the ductility design of doubly reinforced normal- and high-strength concrete beams.

• Computers and Concrete
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• 제12권6호
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• pp.831-850
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• 2013

The high strength materials have been more widely used in reinforced concrete structures because of the benefits of the mechanical and durable properties. Generally, it is known that the ductility decreases with an increase in the strength of the materials. In the design of a reinforced concrete beam, both the flexural strength and ductility need to be considered. Especially, when a reinforced concrete structure may be subjected an earthquake, the members need to have a sufficient ductility. So, each design code has specified to provide a consistent level of minimum flexural ductility in seismic design of concrete structures. Therefore, it is necessary to assess accurately the ductility of the beam sections with high strength materials in order to ensure the ductility requirement in design. In this study, the effects of concrete strength, yield strength of reinforcement steel and amount of reinforcement including compression reinforcement on the complete moment-curvature behavior and the curvature ductility factor of doubly reinforcement concrete beam sections have been evaluated and a newly prediction formula for curvature ductility factor of doubly RC beam sections has been developed considering the stress of compression reinforcement at ultimate state. Based on the numerical analysis results, the proposed predictions for the curvature ductility factor are verified by comparisons with other prediction formulas. The proposed formula offers fairly accurate and consistent predictions for curvature ductility factor of doubly reinforced concrete beam sections.

• Computers and Concrete
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• 제11권4호
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• pp.351-364
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• 2013

This paper presents results from an analytical investigation of the behavior of steel reinforced concrete circular column sections with additional Glass Fiber Reinforced Polymers (GFRP) bars. The primary application of this composite section is to relocate the plastic hinge region from the column-footing joint where repair is difficult and expensive. Mainly, the study focuses on the development of the full nominal moment-axial load (M-P) interaction diagrams for hybrid concrete sections, reinforced with steel bars as primary reinforcement, and GFRP as auxiliary control bars. A large parametric study of circular steel reinforced concrete members were undertaken using a purpose-built MATLAB(c) code. The parameters considered were amount, location, dimensions and mechanical properties of steel, GFRP and concrete. The results indicate that the plastic hinge was indeed shifted to a less critical and congested region, thus facilitating cost-effective repair. Moreover, the reinforced concrete steel-GFRP section exhibited high strength and good ductility.

• Computers and Concrete
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• 제12권4호
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• pp.537-552
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• 2013

Computation of flexural ductility of reinforced concrete beam sections has been proposed by taking into account strain rate sensitive constitutive behavior of concrete and steel, confinement of core concrete and degradation of cover concrete during load reversal under earthquake loading. The estimate of flexural ductility of reinforced concrete rectangular sections has been made for a wide range of tension and compression steel ratios for confined and unconfined concrete at a strain rate varying from $3.3{\times}10^{-5}$ to 1.0/sec encountered during normal and earthquake loading. The parametric studies indicated that flexural ductility factor decreases at increasing strain rates. Percentage decrease is more for a richer mix concrete with the similar reinforcement. The confinement effect has marked influence on flexural ductility and increase in ductility is more than twice for confined concrete (0.6 percent volumetric ratio of transverse steel) compared to unconfined concrete. The provisions in various codes for achieving ductility in moment resisting frames have been discussed.

• Computers and Concrete
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• 제26권4호
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• pp.317-325
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• 2020

A precise estimation of the natural time period of buildings improves design quality, causes a significant reduction of the buildings' weight, and eventually leads to a cost-effective design. In this study, in order to optimise the reinforced concrete frames design, some symmetrical and unsymmetrical buildings composed of solid and hollow members have been simulated using finite element software SAP 2000. In numerical models, different parameters such as overturning moment, story drift, deflection, base reactions, and stiffness of the buildings were investigated and the results have been compared with strength and serviceability limit criteria proposed by Australian Standard (AS 3600 2018). Comparing the results of the numerical modelling with existing standards and performing a cost analysis proved the merits of hollow box sections compared to solid sections. Finally, based on numerical simulation results, two equations for natural time period of moment resisting reinforced concrete buildings have been presented. Both derived equations reflected higher degree of correlation and reliability with different complexities of building when compared with existing standards and relationships provided by other scholars. Therefore, these equations will assist practicing engineers to predict elastic behaivour of structures more precisely.

• Architectural research
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• 제1권1호
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• pp.55-61
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• 1999

In reinforced concrete design, structural member sizes and amount of reinforcing steel areas are usually selected based on the structural designers' experience. Most existing charts provided for the design of reinforced concrete structural members were developed mainly based on force equilibrium conditions and some serviceability criteria. Sections selected from these charts may not result in an economic solution in terms of material costs as well as construction costs. Practical design aids are developed and suggested in this study for the economical design of reinforced concrete beam under flexural loading. With the beam width fixed, the depth of a beam, positive steel areas and negative steel areas are found from Khun-Tucker necessary conditions with Lagrangian multipliers to minimize the sectional cost of a beam. The developed design aids might be useful in selecting optimum reinforced concrete beam sections. Theoretical derivations and use of the developed design aids are described in this paper.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제15권3호
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• pp.345-365
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• 2003

The adoption of fibre reinforced polymer (FRP) rebars (whose behaviour is elastic-brittle) in reinforced concrete (RC) cross sections requires the assessment of the influence of time-dependent behaviour of concrete on the load-carrying capacity of these sections. This paper presents a method of computing the load-carrying capacity of sections that are at first submitted to a constant long-term service load and then overloaded up to ultimate load. The method solves first a non-linear visco-elastic problem, and then a non-linear instantaneous analysis up to ultimate load that takes into account the self-equilibrated stress distribution previously computed. This method is then adopted to perform a parametric analysis that shows that creep and shrinkage of concrete increase the load-carrying capacity of the cross section reinforced with FRP and allows for the suggestion of simple design rules.

• 한국지진공학회논문집
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• 제17권3호
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• pp.107-115
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• 2013

The purpose of this study was to investigate the performance of hollow reinforced concrete bridge column sections with reinforcement details for material quantity reduction. The proposed reinforcement details has have economic feasibility and rationality and makes construction periods shorter. A model of column sections with reinforcement details for material quantity reduction was tested under quasistatic monotonic loading. As a result, the proposed reinforcement details for material quantity reduction was were equal to existing reinforcement details in terms of the required performance. In the a subsequent paper, the an experimental and analytical study will be performed for the performance assessment of hollow reinforced concrete bridge column sections with reinforcement details for material quantity reduction will be performed.