Insight into the tension stiffening behavior of reinforced concrete tension members revealed by finite element modeling

The disasters happened in recent past pointed out the need of design criteria, ensuring adequate safety levels against progressive collapse. The attention was focused on the behavior of composite beam-to-column joint components in the field of large displacements. This article presents the experimental and numerical study enabling the simulation of the RC elements under tension. This has helped in understanding the non-negligible contribution of concrete in tension stiffening response up to failure especially in the case of discontinuous geometry marked in composite structures. The finite element model proposed may be considered a mid-way between smeared and discrete crack modeling approaches.