Tension Stiffening Factors of Reinforced Concrete Members and its Constitutive Equation under Reversed Cyclic Loading

Abstract

The present paper proposes the general form of the tangential constitutive equation of a reinforced concrete uniaxial member, emphasizing on the cracks' opening and closing behavior. In the model, the tension stiffening factor makes the most important role in describing the varying stiffness due to cracks generation and slippage between concrete and reinforcement. The proposed constitutive model can realistically represent the cyclic behavior in tension and in reversed loading to compressive zone and agrees relatively well with experimental results.