A PDROD model of reinforced concrete based on peridynamics and rod elements

The difficulties in dealing with steel skeleton frames and low computational efficiency are the major obstacles for applying peridynamics (PD) to model reinforced concrete (RC) structures. This paper proposes a new reinforced concrete model, named PDROD, in which the concrete is modeled by PD theory and the reinforcement is modeled by rod elements. A bonding formulation is derived to characterize the interaction between the concrete and reinforcements, guaranteeing the consistence of load transfer between the two mediums. Thanks to the new bonding model, the discretization of the concrete and reinforcements does not necessarily need to be coincident, facilitating the application of PDROD in modeling RC structures whose skeleton frames are with complex geometries. The PDROD model not only gives full play to the advantages of PD theory in damage problems without additional failure criteria and stiffness degradation model, but also significantly increases the numerical efficiency of computation, which extends the applicability of PD to modeling real-scale RC structures. The accuracy and efficiency of the PDROD model are demonstrated by simulating a series of examples of concrete plates with reinforcing bars. Good agreements have been observed between the results from PDROD and the classical FEM predictions. The challenging benchmarks on the Stuttgart Shear Tests were also simulated to demonstrate the capability of the PDROD model in quasi-brittle fracture problems of large-scale RC structures.