Consideration of reinforced concrete crushing through cohesive models

In this work, the overlapping crack mode is considered. It permits the modeling of concrete crushing through cohesive surfaces, in a similar way used to simulate fracture. The material is considered in damage when the surfaces interpenetrate each other. Besides simplicity, the big advantage of the methodology is the fact that constitutive relations are independent of the material scale. A generalization is here introduced to consider mixed crushing. Exploratory applications are made considering super-reinforced beams. The effects of the height of the beams, compressive rebars and stirrups are investigated. A good fitting with experiments is obtained.