Issue 36

A. Namdar et alii, Frattura ed Integrità Strutturale, 36 (2016) 168-181; DOI: 10.3221/IGF-ESIS.36.17 168 Effect of flexural crack on plain concrete beam failure mechanism A numerical simulation Abdoullah Namdar, Ershad Darvishi, Xiong Feng Western China Earthquake and Hazards Mitigation Research Center, College of Architecture and Environment, Sichuan University, China ab_namdar@yahoo.com Ideris Zakaria Infrastructure University Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Fadzil Mat Yahaya Department of Civil Engineering, University Malaysia Pahang, Malaysia A BSTRACT . The flexural failure of plain concrete beam occurs along with development of flexural crack on beam. In this paper by using ABAQUS, mechanism failure of plain concrete beam under three steps have been simulated. The cracking moment has been analytically calculated and applied on the both sides of the fixed beam, and flexural crack has been simulated on beam. Displacement, von Mises, load reaction, displacement- crack length, von Mises-crack length and von Mises-displacement of beams have been graphical depicted. Results indicated that, the flexural crack governs beam mechanism failure and its effects on beam resistance failure. It has been found that the flexural crack in initial stage it developed slowly and changes to be fast at the final stage of collapsing beam due to reduction of the flexural resistance of beam. Increasing mechanical properties of concrete, collapse displacement is reduced. K EY WORDS : Stress; Crack; Length; Concrete interaction; FEM. I NTRODUCTION he fracture mechanics concerns the crack development in materials during load applying in any directions. Brittle fracture material cracks occur in excess tensile stress more than tensile strength. For brittle solids material, such as plain concrete, it leads to rapid crack development if applied load is higher than fracture resistance and toughness, subsequently resulting in a failure of the structural elements and/or whole structure. Therefore, linear elastic fracture mechanics is supportive to understand mechanism of elastic stress distributions around cracks and their development; in this regard the numerical simulation is used in study of such problems. The fracture mechanics has been started by Griffith, it is based on the energy-based theory of failure [1]. The flexural crack on plain concrete beam has been experimentally investigated [2]. The state-of-the-art, prediction of three- dimensional crack propagation paths has been numerically simulated to observe the damage [3]. It has been reported T