The Concrete Material The Concrete Material The Concrete Material The Concrete Material

Model Model Model Model

In addition to the information contained in the Lusas user manual, the following comments
may be of use if you are having difficulties using the non-linear concrete model in Lusas.


General

1) The fracture energy softening model (invoked by the use of Option 22) has been removed
from the Lusas system. Compared to the default strain softening method, it was not found
to be sufficiently reliable.

2) The shear retention parameter (invoked by the use of Option 23) has been removed from
the Lusas system. Compared to the default method utilising the shear retention factor, it
was not found to be sufficiently reliable.

3) The concrete model is only available for use with the following elements;

Element Type Element Name
Plane Stress QPM4, QPM8, TPM3, TPM6
Plane stress (Enhanced strain) QPM4M
Crack Tip (Plane stress) QPK8, TPK6
General Shell ("Thick") QTS4, QTS8, TTS3, TTS6
Semi-Loof Shell QSL8, TSL6

Notes:

The BAR2 and BAR3 elements are recommended for use with these elements
when reinforcement is required.

The QPM8 element is recommended in preference to the QPM4M element.

4) Only tensile cracking is available. For stress states in which both the minimum and
maximum principal stresses are compressive, the behaviour is assumed elastic.

5) It is possible that failure may occur at tensile stresses very much lower than the peak
tensile stress defined when one of the principal stresses approaches the compressive
strength defined. This combination takes the Gauss point stress values outside the failure
envelope and failure may, therefore, occur.

6) The concrete model establishes the occurrence of any cracking based on the evaluation of
principal stresses normal to the crack, that is, the principal stress direction may change in
subsequent loading increment after the crack is initially formed but the crack pattern will
not change correspondingly (i.e. it is a fixed crack model) This may give inaccuracies
when plotting graphs of principal stresses, since a history data set of principal stress for a
node will not include any change in direction of the crack. The principal stress direction,
as well as the principal stress magnitude is also of considerable interest when
investigating the results from a finite element analysis. A rotating crack model would
provide more accurate solutions, but is not available at present in Lusas. A fixed crack
model, however, will be sufficient for analyses in which the dominant response is flexure
or a combination of flexure and shear.

7) The concrete model computes the occurrence of cracking based on the evaluation of
principal stresses normal to the crack - if the crack direction changes, the principal stress
may not also change correspondingly. This may give inaccuracies when plotting graphs of
principal stresses, since a plot of principal stress for a node will not include any required
change in direction of the crack.


Difficulties with Convergence

The following suggestions might help;

1) Remove any geometrically nonlinear options (e.g. options 54, 87, 167) whilst trying to get
the data file working - one of them may be added when the solution is more stable since
their inclusion will add unnecessary complexity to the solution. Such options are,
however, only required in large deformation analyses and are not usually required in
concrete cracking analyses.

2) Reducing the loading increment will help stabilise the solution by ensuring that fewer
Gauss points crack during each increment.

3) The use of fine integration, where possible, may also help (Option 18). This increases the
number of Gauss points available to crack and, again, will help stabilise the solution.

4) We recommend that negative pivots are not ignored (by the use of option 62), but strongly
urge that the warning and error messages, from the Lusas output file, relating to negative
pivots be investigated. Such warnings can enable the location of other data problem areas
in the model.

5) The use of option 164 to guide the solution using the arc-length parameter is not
recommended in this type of analysis. This option is particularly useful for use with "snap
through" geometric nonlinear problems, not with materially nonlinear problems.

6) To increase the stability of the analysis, specify a value of unity for the shear retention
factor initially. The value of this parameter may subsequently be decreased.

5) To increase the stability of the analysis, specify a value of 500 for the softening factor
initially. The value of this parameter may subsequently be decreased.

6) Rigid body translation and rotation must be prevented; check the support conditions for
any problems.

7) If the convergence tolerance is too slack, critical stages of the cracking process may be
missed and difficulties in convergence may occur in subsequent increments. The
recommended method would be to;

Increase the maximum number of iterations per increment to 25 (or more). This will
give more time for the cracking occurring in any increment to stabilise and, therefore,
assist convergence.

Maintain a reasonably tight tolerance on both the displacement and residual norms.
This will ensure that the correct nonlinear solution path is followed.

Specify options 16 and 17 to force Lusas to continue if, at the end of the maximum
number of iterations, convergence has not been achieved. The assumption for the use
of these options is that convergence will be very close - or at least the best possible for
that particular increment of loading. Any increments that did not completely satisfy the
specified convergence tolerance would obviously require investigation at the post
processing stage to check on the amount of non-convergence and whether this would
affect the solution at all.

8) Typical non-linear control settings are as follows;

NONLINEAR CONTROL
INCREM 0.05 0.05 0 4 D D D
ITERAT 30 6 0.3
CONVER 0 0 D D
OUTPUT D D 1 D D D
TERMIN 1.0 0 D D D

9) A uniform mesh is important in the area of cracking. Aspect ratios greater than 5 should
be avoided, as should triangular elements where possible. A reasonably refined mesh is
also required in order that any cracks developing in the structure do not spread too rapidly.
This is especially important in the tensile zone immediately below the central and around
the support and loading areas.


If all else fails, it is possible to overlay an additional set of elements onto the existing
concrete elements. This new layer would be given a very low, elastic stiffness. The effect
would be to provide additional small stiffness terms to stabilise the solution during the
iterative process where, during an iteration, all Gauss points may crack and temporarily give
a numerical mechanism which may be corrected during subsequent iterations. Using this
method, it is possible to achieve a higher loading of the structure before complete failure of
the analysis occurs due to catastrophic cracking. This method will increase the solution time,
but these additional elements would only be required over the areas of significant cracking.
Postscript

By far the most popular technique for the analysis of continua is at present the Finite Element
method. Despite the proliferation of finite element packages and the steadily increasing
adoption of the technique for the solution of nonlinear problems, the FE method has not yet,
to date, met with widespread success in the case of concrete structures. The main problem is
the generally acknowledged lack of consistency in results between various structural forms
(and indeed sometimes between components of the same type but differing in size or
detailing). Therefore, even if a successful finite element model is established for a given
structural form, such a success is not automatically guaranteed for other types of structure. It
would appear that there are two main reasons for this lack of reliability of the method when
applied to concrete members: one of these is a direct consequence of the unrealistic material
description, as mentioned above; the other is essentially a computational problem that arises
as a consequence of numerical instabilities associated with the (numerical) cracking of
concrete.
Taken from the Introduction chapter of 'Structural Concrete:
Finite Element Analysis for Limit State Design' by Kostovos and
Pavlovic.