SHEAR CAPACITY OF BLAST LOADED REINFORCED CONCRETE BEAMS

Abstract

In the present thesis, the shear behaviour of RC beams under blast loading is studied numerically by the nonlinear FE program ABAQUS / Explicit. Nonlinear stress-strain relations are used for concrete and reinforcing steel to simulate the material behaviour in compression and. To get a reasonable estimation of induced damage. In the geometry of idealization of R.C beams, rather small element size are used in all analyses. the time increment size was selected to satisfy the numerical stability condition of the nonlinear dynamic analysis. The strain rate effect is included on the concrete and steel material properties. The proposed numerical model and constitutive laws are successfully used to predict the experimental response of several RC beams; tested in the literature. Comprehensive parametric studies were performed and presented in the thesis to study the different shear response characteristics of RC beams with different concrete compressive strength, steel yield stress, longitudinal and web reinforcement ratios. The parametric studies were done using program ABAQUS / Explicit. The research objectives were to study effect of the test variables on the structural response characteristics of RC beams which include the following