The flexural ductility of solid rectangular reinforced concrete beams has been studied quite extensively. However, many reinforced concrete beams are neither solid nor rectangular; examples include T-, ${\Gamma}$-, ${\Pi}$- and box-shaped beams. There have been few studies on the flexural ductility of non-rectangular reinforced concrete beams and as a result little is known about the possible effect of sectional shape on flexural ductility. Herein, the effect of sectional shape on the post-peak flexural behaviour of reinforced normal and high-strength concrete beams has been studied using a newly developed analysis method that employs the actual stress-strain curves of the constitutive materials and takes into account the stress-path dependence of the stress-strain curve of the steel reinforcement. It was revealed that the sectional shape could have significant effect on the flexural ductility of a concrete beam and that the flexural ductility of a T-, ${\Gamma}$-, ${\Pi}$- or box-shaped beam is generally lower than that of a solid rectangular beam with the same overall dimensions and the same amount of reinforcement provided. Based on the numerical results obtained, a simple method of ensuring the provision of a certain minimum level of flexural ductility to non-rectangular concrete beams has been developed.

We present in this work a coupled phenomenological chemo-mechanical model that represents the degradation of concrete-like materials. The chemical behaviour is described by the nowadays well known simplified calcium leaching approach. And the mechanical damage behaviour is described by a continuum damage model which involves the gradient of the damage quantity. The coupled nonlinear problem at hand is addressed within the context of the finite element method. For the equation governing the calcium dissolution-diffusion part of the problem, special care is taken to treat the highly nonlinear calcium conductivity and solid calcium functions. The algorithmic design is based on a Newton-type iterative scheme where use is made of a recently proposed relaxed linearization procedure. And for the equation governing the damage part of the problem, an augmented Lagrangian formulation is used to take into account the damage irreversibility constraint. Finally, numerical simulations are compared with experimental results on cement paste.

A two-dimensional nonlinear finite element model is developed to simulate time-dependent cracking of reinforced concrete members under service loads. To predict localized cracking, the crack band model is employed to model individual crack opening. In conjunction with the crack band model, a bond-interface element is used to model the slip between concrete and reinforcing steel permitting large slip displacements between the concrete element nodes and the steel truss element nodes at crack openings. The time-dependent effects of concrete creep and shrinkage are incorporated into the smeared crack model as inelastic pre-strains in an iterative solution procedure. Two test examples are shown to verify the finite element model with good agreement between the model and the observed test results.

A coupled damage-viscoplasticity model is presented for the analysis of localisation and size effects. On one hand, viscosity helps to avoid mesh sensitivity because of the introduction of a length scale in the model and, on the other hand, enables to represent size effects. Size effects were analysed by means of three-point bending tests. Correlation between the fracture energy parameter measured experimentally and the density fracture energy modelling parameter is discussed. It has been shown that the dependence of nominal strength and fracture energy on size is determined by the ligament length in comparison with the width of the fracture process zone.

Several extensions to the Thelandersson phenomenological model for concrete under transient high temperatures are explored. These include novel expressions for the temperature degradation of the elastic modulus and the temperature dependency of the coefficient of the free thermal strain. Furthermore, a coefficient of thermo mechanical strain is proposed as a bi-linear function of temperature. Good qualitative agreement with various test results taken from the literature is demonstrated. Further extensions include the effects of plastic straining and temperature dependent Poisson's ratio. The models performance is illustrated on several simple benchmark problems under uniaxial and biaxial stress states.

A relatively simple multiple-vertical-line-element macro model has been incorporated into a standard computer code DRAIN-2D. It was used in blind predictions of seismic response of cantilever RC walls subjected to a series of consequent earthquakes on a shaking table. The model was able to predict predominantly flexural response with relative success. It was able to predict the stiffness and the strength of the pre-cracked specimen and time-history response of the highly nonlinear wall as well as to simulate the shift of the neutral axis and corresponding varying axial force in the cantilever wall. However, failing to identify the rupture of some brittle reinforcement in the third test, the model was not able to predict post-critical, near collapse behaviour during the subsequent response to two stronger earthquakes. The analysed macro model seems to be appropriate for global analyses of complex building structures with RC structural walls subjected to moderate/strong earthquakes. However, it cannot, by definition, be used in refined research analyses monitoring local behaviour in the post critical region.