Developing reinforced concrete elastic-plastic beam element model

The response analysis of reinforced concrete (RC) structures subjected to strong earthquake motions require realistic conceptual models. The special models, such as Clough and Takeda, which describe the non-linear section characteristic of reinforced concrete beam and column. In the earthquake motions, the deforming is sensitive to the response of structures intensively. The traditional lumped plastic model inevitably induces inaccuracy. Hence, meshing the members or distributing stiffness along the whole member is employed to simulate the seismic response of the structures. In this paper, Takeda elastic-plastic beam element model has been developed, which is based on general FEM code ABAQUS in order to simulate the response of RC. The influence is discussed due to the different lengths of plastic zone and element sizes.