Local buckling of reinforcing steel bars in RC members under compression forces

Buckling of longitudinal bars is a brittle failure mechanism, often recorded in reinforced concrete (RC) structures after an earthquake. Studies in the literature highlights that it often occurs when steel is in the post elastic range, by inducing a modification of the engineered stress-strain law of steel in compression. A proper evaluation of this effect is of fundamental importance for correctly evaluating capacity and ductility of structures. Significant errors can be obtained in terms of ultimate bending moment and curvature ductility of an RC section if these effects are not accounted, as well as incorrect evaluations are achieved by non-linear static analyses. This paper presents a numerical investigation aiming to evaluate the engineered stress-strain law of reinforcing steel in compression, including second order effects. Non-linear FE analyses are performed under the assumption of local buckling. A role of key parameters is evaluated, making difference between steel with strain hardening or with perfectly plastic behaviour. Comparisons with experimental data available in the literature confirm the accuracy of the achieved results and make it possible to formulate recommendations for design purposes. Finally, comparisons are made with analytical formulations available in the literature and based on obtained results, a modification of the stress-strain law model of Dhakal and Maekawa (2002) is proposed for fitting the numerical predictions.