Stress-strain curves of concrete under monotonic uniaxial compression: a systematic review

The existence of more than thirty different mathematical expressions that claims to represent the stress-strain relationship of a concrete specimen under monotonic and uniaxial compression (including those proposed in the official regulations of different countries that have regulated by law the use of concrete as structural material), seems to require an additional effort in formulating a universally accepted equation. As a first step toward that goal, in this paper we show and analyze systematically the different dynasties of equations that have been published, since the first proposals of Ritter and Bach (1897-1899), through the, more or less complicated, polynomial truncations of the Smith and Young's equation (1956), continuing with the contributions based on statistical distributions of the damage model, and concluding with the analysis of the approach to the issue by the successive versions of the Model Code and the Spanish Structural Concrete Instruction (EHE-08).