Influence of bond slip on crack spacing in numerical modeling of reinforced concrete

This paper investigates the influence of bond slip on crack spacing in reinforced concrete. A bond-link element is used to account for the influence of the bond slip between the concrete and the reinforcing steel. Following a previous work, the writers treat crack spacing as a strain localization problem. A new numerical model for prediction of crack spacing in reinforced concrete is applied. It is assumed that the deformation pattern of crack spacing consumes the least energy among all kinematically admissible deformations, and the energy minimization approach is applied to predict crack spacing. To simplify the problem, a lattice model is used, in which the cracking process is represented by the damage of the concrete bar elements. The influence of the bond slip on the cracking patterns have been studied through three numerical examples. The results show that without considering bond slip, the damage near the reinforcement is distributed rather than localized, whereas considering bond slip, the damage near the reinforcement is localized. The influence of bond slip on crack spacing is significant.