Reinforced Concrete Materials - Dr.
Li Bing
Reinforced Concrete Materials
Monotonic Loading
The following figures show the strain-stress relationships for the three most common civil
engineering materials when they are monotonically loaded, that is loaded slowly to failure
until either tension or compression.
Steel
For steel used for reinforced concrete and structural steel sections, the monotonic stress strain
relationship typically has three branches: a linear branch in the elastic range, a yield plateau
in the plastic range and a strain hardening branch in the plastic range. For reinforced concrete,
the characteristic yield strengths (i.e., the lower branch in the plastic range is 300 and 430
MPa.
Prestressing steel is high strength but has no well defined yield strength.
Concrete
The compressive strength of the standard concrete cylinders f c' , is typically 20 to 60 MPa.
The standard concrete test cylinders have a height/diameter ratio of 2, and are usually tested
within a few minutes. The longitudinal strain at maximum strength is 0.002, but for very high
strength concrete, approaches 0.003. Very high strength concrete (as high as 100 MPa in
New Zealand) is extremely brittle. In the elastic range, Poisson’s ratio varies 0.15 to 0.20, but
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Reinforced Concrete Materials - Dr. Li Bing
the transverse strains become very large beyond the elastic range. The concrete cylinder
eventually fails by longitudinal splitting.
The compressive strength of concrete under sustained loading is about 80% of compressive
strength under a short term loading. Also, creep causes the shape of the stress-strain curve to
change with the rate of loading.
Concrete with biaxial and triaxial compression
The concrete compressive strength increases when it is subjected to biaxial compressive
stresses. The interaction curve below shows the combinations of stress that result in failure.
Triaxial compression allows an increase in both strength and ductility. Eg., Cylinders tested
with uniform lateral confining pressure, f l , increase their confined axial compressive
strength , f cc' , to:
f cc' = f c' + 4.1 f l
Passive confining pressure, applied by the transverse hoop or spiral steel within reinforced
concrete, also improves the longitudinal stress-strain behavior. The concrete becomes
confined when the longitudinal stresses approach f c' , and the transverse strains in the
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Reinforced Concrete Materials - Dr. Li Bing
concrete becomes very large. The concrete then bears against the transverse reinforcement,
which applies a passive confining pressure. The transverse reinforcement will normally reach
its yield strength f yh . The lateral confining pressure f l , is obtained by equilibrium as
illustrated for the spiral, circular and rectangular hoops at spacing s along the columns
shown below.
The stress-strain response of the confined concrete is shown below (left) at high strains, the
concrete outside the confined region spalls off (e.g., as shown in the figure on the right
below).
Deformation capacity is of great importance in earthquake and blast engineering. In
reinforced concrete buildings that are designed to resist these effects, components such as
beams, columns and beam-column joints are detailed with closely spaced ties or spirals.
When a concrete component is subjected to large compressive loadings, and the width or part
width of the concrete component increases due to Poisson’s effect and microcracking, the ties
or spirals are stressed in tension, creating an offsetting confining compressive stress in the
enclosed concrete. The resulting triaxial state of compressive stress in the concrete enclosed
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Reinforced Concrete Materials - Dr. Li Bing
or confined by the ties or spirals increases strength and ductility of the concrete component.
Models for such confined concrete are presented in the following lecture.
Much research has been conducted on stress-strain relationship for confined concrete.
Relationships have been established for normal-weight concrete and high-strength concrete.
Some of the better know relationships are listed below:
Normal Strength Concrete
Scott, Park and Priestley – ACI Structural Journal. Jan 1982
Sheikh et al _ ASCE Structural Division, Dec 1982
Mander, Priestley and Park _ ASCE Structural Division, Aug 1988
High-Strength Concrete
Yung et al – ASCE Structural Division, Feb 1988
Martinez et al. _ ACI Structural Journal. Jan 1984
Li, Park and Tanaka _ ACI Structural Journal. May 2001
We will focus on the Mander et al relationship for normal strength concrete for the remainder
of the class.
Consider first the generic stress-strain model for monotonic loading of confined and
unconfined concrete in compression. The shaded area in the stress-strain relationship of the
above figure characterizes the additional energy that can be absorbed in a confined section.
The ration of the maximum concrete strain in confined and unconfined concrete can range
between 4 and 15, which indicates the substantial benefit of confining concrete in zones of a
concrete in zones of a concrete structure that will dissipate energy.
The Mander model is applicable to all section shapes and all levels of confinement. The
stress-strain relationship for confined concrete is defined using the following equations.
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Reinforced Concrete Materials - Dr. Li Bing
Repeated loading
Under repeated loading in same direction, the unloading and reloading stress-strain curves
for steel follow the same path up to the monotonic curve. The monotonic curve is the
envelope curve for repeated loading of the same sign.
Under cyclic (reversed) loading into both the tension and compression ranges, the stress-
strain curve for steel displays the Bauschinger effect, in which the curve becomes non-linear
at a stress much lower than the yield strength after the first excursion into the yield range.
The reduced tangent modulus during cyclic loading makes steel more likely to buckle when
loaded into compression than it is during monotonic loading. This is particularly important
for longitudinal reinforcing steel (which also provides confinement as discussed above) and
structural steel flanges.
