FEA of reinforced concrete beam-column joint with steel fibers for cyclic loading

Steel fibers reinforced concrete (SFRC) is now widely accepted as a construction material for its added benefits. The proven increases in high shear capacity, toughness, bridging action of fibers and bond improvement from addition of steel fibers into mix design is a field yet to be explored, Therefore, Reinforced Cement Concrete (RCC) beam-column joint with steel fibers was modeled and analyzed for cyclic loading.

Beam-column joint is the most critical section of a structure under mixed loading such as that during a seismic episode. Therefore, in this research a reinforced SFRC beam column joint is modeled and analyzed for cyclic earthquake loading with the help of finite element analysis (FEA) software ABAQUS to compare the results with the experimental study.

Nonlinear static and nonlinear dynamic analysis are carried out on the SFRC joint for the comparison of simulated results with the experimental analysis.

In this paper, Initially, modeling of SFRC joint was done. Then, the finite element analysis of beam-column joint with steel fibers was carried out. After number of simulations, obtained FEA results were compared with the experimental work on the based on the load vs deflection curve, shear stresses, plastic strain region and plastic strain pattern. After the comparison, it was found that the performance of the numeric model for cyclic loading verified the experimental study, and the results obtained were quite promising.