Implementation of a Multisurface Cap-Plasticity Model for Concrete and its Application to the Simulation of Composite Joint Tests

C. Feist, G. Hofstetter
Institute for Structural Analysis and Strength of Materials, University of Innsbruck, Austria Abstract: A constitutive model for plain concrete under three-dimensional stress states and its implementation into ABAQUS are presented. The model is based on the theory of rate-independent elastoplasticity. Its convex, nonsmooth composite yield-surface consists of three coupled regions. The main objective is the simulation of the nonlinear behavior of concrete under three-dimensional predominantly compressive stresses. To this end a cap-surface is employed. The material behavior under shear is simulated by an exponent-based Drucker-Prager yield surface whereas the material response under tension is approximated by a tension cut-off. This is done with respect to simplicity, as the model is not intended to simulate tensional failure. The material model is incorporated into the ABAQUS code as a user defined material. The set of material parameters for a specific type of concrete is obtained by means of an optimization task: Utilizing a single-element test results of complex three-dimensional tests on cubicshaped concrete specimens are used to determine the material parameters. A practical application of the cap-model in the context of civil engineering is presented by the simulation of the compressive behavior of composite joint tests. These tests are intended to investigate the behavior of certain compressionally stressed components within the joint regions of composite steel/concrete-frames. Experimentally obtained data are compared to the results of three-dimensional FEM-based analyses accounting for geometrical and material-nonlinearity as well as for contact between the steel and concrete components. As the reinforcement has no influence on the structural response in these tests, it is justified to employ a material model for plain concrete.

1. Introduction
The cap model, which was originally proposed by DiMaggio and Sandler (DiMaggio, 1971) and further examined by several authors in the literature (Hofstetter, 1993), is suited to describe the nonlinear behavior of soils and concrete. It allows control of dilatancy by means of a hardening cap surface, which intersects a fixed or independently hardening failure envelope in a nonsmooth manner. The cap model in the formulation used within the framework of this paper is a well-adopted and used model in the context of plasticity constitutive models. The main issue of the present work is its implementation as a user defined material model (UMAT-interface) for the finite-element code ABAQUS and its application to simulations of the structural response of composite joint tests. First of all the formulation of the underlying constitutive model is highlighted and explained briefly, followed by a short description of implementational details within the ABAQUS UMAT-interface. To obtain the necessary material parameters an optimization problem to reconstruct test-results on complex 2002 ABAQUS Users Conference 1

compressional tests is outlined. The application of the constitutive model is shown within the framework of a simulation program on composite joints, which furthermore should serve as a design model. The specimens and the given test program are described before dealing with the simulation details and results. The limitations of the model are outlined and possibilities to overcome its deficiencies are focused. This will be done by giving an outlook on the authors present work within the framework of combining the cap model with embedded discontinuity models.

2. Formulation of the Cap Model

The cap model employed in this study is based on the formulation by (Hofstetter, 1993) which contains some modifications of the original form by (DiMaggio, 1971). The model may be classified as a multisurface, two invariant and rate independent model within the framework of the theory of plasticity. The convex yield surface consists of three independent yield surfaces, namely a failure envelope f1 ( ) , an elliptical cap surface f 2 (, ) , and a tension cutoff region f 3 ( ) , where denotes the stress tensor and represents a hardening parameter. As can be seen from the formal descriptions of the three yield surfaces, only the cap surface is formulated as a hardening surface, whereas the two other surfaces are assumed to be fixed in stress-space. The elastic domain is enclosed by the three yield surfaces. A geometric interpretation of the yield surface is depicted in Figure 1. In the following compression and compaction are assumed as positive quantities. The three surfaces are mathematically formulated as follows:

f1 ( ) = s Fe (I1 ) if T I1 ,

(1)

Figure 1. The composite yield surface of the cap model.

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where

Fe (I1 ) = expI1 + I1 . f 2 (, ) = Fc ( s , I1 , ) Fe ( ) if L( ) I1 X ( ) ,
where
Fc ( s , I1 , ) = s
2

(2) (3)

1 [I1 L( )]2 R2

(4) (5)

f 3 ( ) = T I1 if I1 = T .

, , , and R denote material parameters to define the failure envelope and the cap surface, whereas T
represents the tension cutoff-value. I1 is the first invariant of the stress tensor and s denotes the norm of the deviatoric stress tensor with s being defined as
s= 1 I1I 3

(6)

by using the second-order unit tensor I . In Equation (4) L( ) represents the geometrical center of the cap-surface defined by
> 0 . L( ) = = 0 0

(7)

On the other hand X ( ) - the intersection of the cap surface and hydrostatic axis - follows from
X ( ) = + RFe ( ) .

(8)

The hardening law is based on the behavior of concrete under hydrostatic compression. With as the

P strain tensor, I1 = tr ( ) as the first invariant of the strain tensor and I1 as the plastic volumetric strain the following relationship is assumed: P v = W 1 exp DX ( )

(9)

P denoting the effective volumetric plastic strain defined by the integration of: with v

I P if I1P > 0 or > 0 and > I1 P v = 1 . 0 in all other cases

For the integration of the cap model the commonly used return-mapping algorithm with an implicit backward Euler integration scheme is used. It basically consists of two steps: First an elastic trial or 2002 ABAQUS Users Conference

(10)

predictor stress tr n +1 is applied to the (n + 1) -th time step (or load step) followed by the evaluation of the yield criterion. If the yield criterion is violated, the plastic corrector step is applied, which geometrically can be interpreted as a closest point projection of the predictor stress onto the yield surface. E.g., for plastic loading in the cap mode, the plastic corrector step consists of solving a nonlinear equation to find the value for the hardening parameter allowing to satisfy the yield criterion. Generally this implies the incorporation of a local Newton iteration scheme. The described constitutive model differs from the one already implemented in ABAQUS (*CAP PLASTICITY) (ABAQUS, 2001) with respect to the following characteristics: in contrast to the ABAQUS cap model its yield surface is a nonsmooth composite surface consisting of three different portions. It does not use a transition surface between the cap and failure envelope, but employs two additional corner modes. Furthermore the failure envelope is an exponent based function. However, the main objective to implement the cap constitutive model as a user defined material model is its combination with the strong discontinuity approach (SDA) in the future, which will be briefly outlined later in this paper.

3. Implementation of the cap model as an ABAQUS UMAT

The described constitutive model was incorporated into the finite element code of ABAQUS (ABAQUS, 2001) utilizing the UMAT interface. The subroutine was coded for plane strain, axisymmetric and fully three-dimensional conditions. It uses the state variable concept to pass information concerning the history of the hardening state, the cap intersection with the hydrostatic axis X ( ) and the cap center L( ) . Furthermore a so-called plasticity mode flag provides information about the active yield surface or the potential corner modes between these surfaces. For the use of the material model within a particular analysis the user must provide 10 material constants, which may be divided in three categories: elastic properties: plasticity properties: hardening properties: Youngs modulus, Poissons ratio
, , , , R, T W, D

4. Parameter identification
Most of the material parameters could be determined by triaxial tests (Kropik, 1994). If, however, only a limited number of test results is available, then the material parameters may only be obtained by adapting numerical results to test results. The simplest way to perform this task would be a trial and error method, which of course lacks efficiency and accuracy. It is rather recommended to formulate a least square root minimization task. Enriching the method with finite difference gradients with respect to the unknown parameters and a quasi-Newton solution scheme results in a satisfying performance of the parameter identification algorithm. Additionally bounds for the parameters may be specified to consider physical useful value ranges.

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Mathematically the optimization task may be defined as follows:

f (P ) = j P, exp exp j j
i =1 j =1 NE NS

(11)

with
P = {, , , , R, T , W , D}

(12)

as the set of parameters. In Equation (11) NE defines the number of experiments used for the optimization routine, whereas NS denotes the number of experimentally obtained stress-values exp . On the other hand the term P, exp represents the numerically obtained stress-values for a given set of parameters P and experimental strain-values exp . The problem may be defined by the optimization task
P min f (P ) .

(13)

Using the set of finite difference gradients f P allows to employ a quasi-Newton solution scheme to perform this task by reformulating Equation (13) as follows:
f P 0 .

(14)

For this purpose it is obviously desirable to use experiments involving simple geometries to reduce effects not related to the material behavior. On the other hand these experiments should exhibit loadings as complex as possible and well suited to depict the desired material response. With respect to these boundary conditions the well-documented and extensive test program carried out at the University of Colorado at Boulder (Scavuzzo, 1983) is ideally suited to serve as a series of reference experiments. These experiments are divided into three categories depending on the loading conditions: triaxial compression, simple shear and triaxial tension tests. To adapt the parameters of the present constitutive model we will focus on the first two categories, as all the parameters contained in P are related to the nonlinear behavior of concrete under predominantly compressive and shear stresses. The test specimen is a small cubic shaped concrete body. This implies the advantage that the numerical simulation degenerates to a simple single-element test. Thus the automated optimization task may be solved without the need for the overall finite element code but just by using the constitutive routine to obtain the function f (P ) . This also may be seen from Equation (11) as P, exp does not depend on any structural geometry but simply represents the constitutive relationship. Figure 2 depicts the comparison of experimentally and numerically obtained stress-strain curves for an already optimized set of parameters. These curves represent one of the tests contained in the described test program and is defined by two loading stages: First the specimen is subjected to a pure hydrostatic loading followed by a circular stress path in the deviatoric plane. It is obvious that the numerical solution strongly depends on the parameters describing the shape of the cap surface.

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Figure 2. Comparison of experimental and computed stress-strain curves. It should be mentioned that the depicted, numerically obtained stress-strain curve is based on a parameter set P for NE = 8 . The correspondence between numerical and experimental results could be further optimized for one particular test. But the supposed better correspondence also means that the thereby obtained parameter set P for NE = 1 would eventually lead to worse correspondence for any other loading conditions. The described strategy raises the problem how to adapt the material parameters, obtained from the tests by (Scavuzzo, 1983), to a concrete of different strength. Of course it would be too expensive to set up a test program that extensive as the one shown by (Scavuzzo, 1983) for every new material quality encountered in a particular analysis. To overcome this problem it is simply proposed to linearly scale the material parameters according to an easy to measure material property such as the uniaxial compressive stress. In certain ranges this procedure gains good results and is used for the analyses described later in this work.

5. Partial composite joints

Composite structures become more and more part of modern civil engineering practice both in structural engineering and in bridge construction. The composite technology unifies the advantages of the two classical branches in civil engineering, concrete construction and steel construction, and minimizes the disadvantages. We will focus on an example in structural engineering, to which the described numerical analysis will be applied. Suppose a two-storey frame as it may be used in daily civil engineering practice and as it is depicted in Figure 3(a). In classical civil engineering the frame would be erected as a pure RC (reinforced concrete) structure using classic slim floors. However, for larger spans and loads the problem of shear punching in context with the slim floor joints arises. 6 2002 ABAQUS Users Conference

Figure 3. Two-storey frame (a) with partial composite joint detail (b). This normally leads to thicker slabs and by this way to higher dead loads. A more advanced approach consists in the design of a pure composite structure with columns and rails constructed as steel/RCcomposite parts. Often the second approach is too costly for midsize structures. This often leads to the demand for a compromise, which may be denoted as a mixed approach. In the following a construction concept for such a mixed approach will be outlined (Frischhut, in work), which was already successfully used at several structures in Austria and Germany. The basic idea is to use the methods of conventional RC-structural design and to overcome its deficiencies. These deficiencies are mostly found in the region of the slim floor joint, i.e. the connection between the column and the rail or slab respectively. To overcome the shear-punching problem in this region normally the thickness of the slabs is increased. 2002 ABAQUS Users Conference 7

Figure 4. Structural concept of partial composite joint. This disadvantage is avoided by the design of the partial composite joint (PCJ) as shown in Figure 3(b). Basically the partial composite joint consists of a steel T-profile being part of the slab and a steel hollow profile collar. As can be seen from Figure 4 the bending moment can be split up in a tension force and compression force. The tension force stresses the longitudinal reinforcement, whereas the compression force stresses the so-called concrete compressional region within the slab. With increasing bending moments as they can be found in the joint-region the concrete compressional region may not be sufficient to carry the total compression force. To solve this problem an inverted T-profile accumulates the compressional force through a series of studs welded on the upper side of the flange of the profile. On the other hand the slab also distributes the shear forces onto the flange and the web of the T-profile. This process is supported by the transverse reinforcement. The web of the T-profile additionally increases the bending stiffness in the joint-region. On the interfacial edge between the slab and the column the total shear force and the bending compressional force from the slab are both carried by the T-profile. The latter must transmit these forces into the RC-column utilizing a steel hollow profile collar and a compression cleat. The additional stiffness of the hollow steel profile helps the RC-column to support the high compressional loads transmitted by the compression cleat. The shear forces are transmitted by a bolt and a shear connector plate welded onto the hollow profile collar. Shear connectors further transmit the shear forces to the RC-column. These shear connectors are special steel nails, which are fastened with a powder-actuated fastening tool at the building site (Beck, 1999). Consequently, the partial composite joint consists of three mechanisms to transmit forces from a RC-slab to a RC-column: the transmission of shear forces by shear connectors, the introduction of high compression forces from bending moments into a RC-column by a T-profile and the hollow profile steel collar and the transmission of tension forces by reinforcement. The advantages of this design concept are slabs and columns with a reduced thickness and strong joints resulting in a high load carrying capacity of the overall frame-structure. The proposed design concept was developed at the University of Innsbruck (Frischhut, in work) in corporation with a consortium of construction firms and the fastening division of HILTI AG. 8 2002 ABAQUS Users Conference

Figure 5. Specimen for compression test. The task to design the individual components of the partial composite joint is subdivided according to the two prevailing mechanisms. The shear transmission problem has been a long-term research project of the HILTI AG (Beck, 1999), whereas the numerical simulation of the structural behavior of the compression components will be focused in the following. To investigate the behavior of the compressional components of the PCJ an extensive test program has been established (Frischhut, in work). To this end test specimens as the one shown in Figure 5 are built with varying geometrical parameters. The depicted specimen consists of a short part of a RC-column with the characteristic hollow profile steel collar. Compression cleats are welded onto two sides of the collar, one serving as a fixed support and the other one as the point of load application. The test load simulating the compression force transmitted from the steel T-profile is applied in displacement-controlled manner to obtain information not only about the load carrying capacity but also about the ductility and the post-peak behavior. It follows from the loading of the specimen that the shear connection between the hollow profile collar and the RC-column is not of importance for these tests. Therefore it is decided to do the tests without the application of the nail-shaped shear connectors. This assumption is confirmed by preliminary tests comparing the behavior both with and without the shear connectors. At a first thought the same could also be assumed for the effects related to the reinforcement. Indeed the reinforcement does not influence the behavior of the PCJ under pure compression up to its load carrying capacity. But as can easily be shown the reinforcement does have a major influence on the structural response in the post-peak regime. Hence, it is decided not to neglect the reinforcement within these tests. The results of the test program should confirm the assumptions made during the development of the PCJ and furthermore serve as a basis for design rules for the everyday engineering practice. To limit the amount of testing it was desirable to conduct parametrical studies of the described problem by means of numerical analyses based on the Finite Element Method. At a first stage some analyses should be carried out along with some preliminary tests to calibrate the mathematical model by the results obtained from the tests. At a second stage the calibrated numerical model should serve for parametrical studies to obtain data for specific design situations and to set up the already mentioned design rules. By this way the test program can be limited to a relative small number of tests. 2002 ABAQUS Users Conference 9

6. Numerical analyses of the PCJ compression tests

As can be seen from Figure 5 the specimen is characterized by two planes of symmetry. This fact is exploited for the numerical model of the PCJ. The finite element model is depicted in Figure 6 and shows the RC-column part, the hollow profile collar and the compression cleat. The applied boundary conditions with respect to the symmetry can also be seen from the same Figure 6. The whole structure is modelled with quadratic solid elements (C3D20). The interface between the hollow profile and the RC-column is modelled by SURFACE definitions. As the RC-column is predominantly compressively stressed beyond its elastic limit, the described cap model seems to be a good approach to simulate the material response. This constitutive model is applicable to plain concrete. Therefore the constitutive model will only be capable to predict the structural response up to its load carrying capacity. It will not be able to simulate the post-peak behavior. Thus, as can be seen from Figure 6 the reinforcement was neglected in the analyses. For the steel components linear elastic, ideal plastic material behavior was assumed. The analyses were carried out in a displacement-controlled fashion, which is not cogently necessary, as post-peak effects are not taken into consideration, but helps to overcome numerical difficulties resulting from the contact formulation.

Figure 6. Finite element discretization of one quarter of the specimen.

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Figure 7. Deformed shape of the finite element model.

Figure 8. Deformed shape of the test specimen. It is notable that the loss of contact of the free side of the hollow steel profile collar from the concrete is well simulated. Figure 7 shows the deformed shape of the PCJ finite element model compared to the deformed shape of a corresponding specimen depicted in Figure 8. Figure 9 shows the comparison of the load deflection curves for a specific test and the corresponding numerical analysis. Good correspondence between test and analysis is achieved up to the point of the load carrying capacity despite of the applied simplifications. The mentioned limitations of the cap model imply the missing correspondence beyond this point. The overall stiffness of the structure is well simulated although the load deflection curve obtained by the test shows a small and progressively increasing stiffness at an early stage of the test. This deviation may be explained by a small gap between the steel hollow profile collar and the concrete column due to shrinkage. These effects were neglected in the numerical simulations but could be taken into account by either defining a gap or by considering shrinkage effects in the material formulation. 2002 ABAQUS Users Conference 11

Figure 9. Comparison of load deflection curves. The regions of the concrete column exhibiting plastic material behavior in the cap mode can be seen in Figure 10. The figure reflects the situation encountered at a deflection of the point of load application of approximately 5 mm (see also Figure 9), which corresponds to the load carrying capacity. All other plastic modes (tension cut-off, failure envelope, corner modes) are not active in the finite element model and, thus, the remainder of the concrete domain exhibits elastic behavior. It is notable that the load seems to be transmitted by a wedge shaped region. This can even better be seen from Figure 11 showing the distribution of the hardening parameter , where a quarter of the concrete domain is removed for the sake of better insight. Expectedly the region just underneath the point of load application exhibits the greatest plastic straining.

Figure 10. Elements subjected to cap plasticity mode.

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Figure 11. Hardening parameter .

7. Conclusions and outlook

The proposed constitutive model seems to reflect the material behavior encountered in the PCJ tests very well, although it obviously exhibits various limitations. The model shows good results in simulating highly multiaxial compressive straining of concrete and yields good correspondence with test results for the structural stiffness up to the point of load carrying capacity. However, this relatively simple model obviously cannot cover the structural behavior in the post-peak regime. An enrichment of the constitutive model in order to allow the simulation of cracking of concrete may be found by the method of the strong discontinuity approach (SDA) (Jirasek, 1998, 2000, 2001). This method may be classified as an alternative to the two classical approaches to simulate cracking of concrete: the smeared crack model and the discrete crack model. The first approach requires some regularization parameter to overcome mesh-sensitivity whereas the latter implies very fine discretizations in regions of potential cracks or the incorporation of an adaptive remeshing strategy both resulting in high modelling and computational efforts. The strong discontinuity approach is based on the idea to enrich a particular element with additional degrees of freedom representing the magnitude and direction of the cracks. These additional degrees of freedom are condensed at element level. The element behaves like any other element with displacement based degrees of freedom up to the point a crack detection criterion (e.g. a simple Rankine criterion) implies to add the supplementary degrees of freedom to simulate the crack opening. The combination of such a SDA based element with the cap model described in the present paper is the aim of the ongoing work.

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8. References
1. ABAQUS/Standard Theory Manual, Version 6.1, Hibbitt, Karlsson & Sorensen Inc., 2001. 2. Beck, H., Nailed Shear Connection in Composite Tube Columns, Conference Proceedings of the Eurosteel Conference `99, CVUT Praha, 1999. 3. DiMaggio, F. L., and I. S. Sandler, Material Models for Granular Soils, Journal for Engineering Mechanics, ASCE, pp. 935-950, 1971. 4. Frischhut, M., Zur Entwicklung der Berechnung und Konstruktion von Mischbausystemen im Hochbau, Ph.D.-Thesis (German), Department for Architecture and Civil Engineering, University of Innsbruck, in work. 5. Hofstetter, G., J. C. Simo, and R. L. Taylor, A Modified Cap Model: Closest Point Solution Algorithms, Computers & Structures, vol. 46, NO2, pp. 203-214, 1993. 6. Jirasek, M., Embedded crack models for concrete fracture, Conference Proceedings of the EURO-C 1998, pp. 291-300, 1998. 7. Jirasek, M., Comparative Study on Finite Elements with Embedded Discontinuities, Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, vol. 188, pp. 307-330, 2000. 8. Jirasek, M., and T. Zimmermann, Embedded Crack Model: I. Basic Formulation, International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering, vol. 50, pp. 1269-1290, 2001. 9. Kropik, Ch., Three-Dimensional Elasto-Viscoplastic Finite Element Analysis of Deformations and Stresses Resulting from the Excavation of Shallow Tunnels, Ph.D.-Thesis, University of Technology of Vienna, 1994. 10. Scavuzzo, R., T. Stankowski, K. H. Gerstle, and H.-Y. Ko, Stress-strain curves for concrete under multiaxial load histories, NSF CME-80-01508, Department for Civil Engineering, University of Colorado, Boulder, 1983.

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