Micropolar Peridynamic Constitutive Model for Concrete

The nuclear industry relies heavily upon reinforced concrete structures. It is therefore essential that we develop robust and reliable theoretical and computational models for simulating the behavior of reinforced concrete. We develop a simple rate-independent micropolar peridynamic constitutive model for concrete subject to monotonic deformation. Using this model, we demonstrate that many of the commonly observed, complex, behaviors of concrete emerge naturally: elasticity, linear distributed anisotropic damage, discrete cracking, dilatency, and shear bands. In addition, bond between reinforcing steel and concrete is modeled in a simple and natural way. Also, a boundary effect that has not been explicitly observed in the laboratory is predicted by the micropolar peridynamic model. The model is implemented in a computational simulation program written in MATLAB. Using this computer program, we use two example problems to demonstrate the efficacy of the peridynamic constitutive model. The model is found to be conceptually simpler and also in some aspects superior to the commonly-used finite element approaches to modeling both plain and reinforced concrete structures.