Numerical Simulation of the Damage Behavior of a Concrete Beam with an Anisotropic Damage Model

An anisotropic damage model was proposed to describe the nonlinear behavior of concrete beams under monotonic and cyclic loading. The hysteresis effect of concrete is approximately modeled by employing nonlinear loading/linear reloading stress paths in the model, which was implemented into ABAQUS. Linear, bilinear, exponential and Reinhardt strain softening functions are introduced to investigate their influence on accuracy of calculations. The load–deflection responses obtained by the damage model reflect the damage-induced nonlinear behavior of concrete beams, results are comparable with the test data. The strain softening functions significantly affect simulation accuracy, and the responses obtained by the Reinhardt function are in the best agreement with experimental ressults. The numerical data under cyclic loading are consistent with those obtained in the experiment, characterizing the degradation of stiffness and hysteresis effect of concrete beams. It is concluded that the anisotropic damage model can be used to simulate the nonlinear behavior of concrete structures.