ABSTRACT
In addition to experimental investigations, the finite element analysis is one of the effective methods to study the dynamic mechanical properties of reinforced concrete members. Adhikary et al. (2013) established three-dimensional nonlinear finite element model by employing finite element code LSDYNA, and analyzed the mechanical behavior of reinforced concrete beams. The analysis results showed that the ultimate carrying capacity and stiffness of reinforced concrete beams increased
1 INTRODUCTION
The strain rate effect of concrete and steel reinforcement materials under the explosion and impact load has been widely accepted, and it is reflected in the design code of national defense engineering (Lin et al. 2008, Liang et al. 2013). However, their strain rate effect under earthquake load (in the range from 10−5/s to 10−1/s) have not yet been paid attention to, and currently domestic and foreign codes for seismic design of buildings seldom take into account their strain rate effect. Previous studies show that the mechanical properties and deformation capacity of concrete and steel reinforcement materials under earthquake strain rate are different from that under quasi-static strain rate. Therefore, the mechanical properties of reinforced concrete members are directly related to the loading velocity.
