Specialized calculation
Introduction
The Magnel-Vandepitte Laboratory performs specialized calculations in order to simulate the real behavior of concrete and reinforced or prestressed concrete structures for research purposes as well as in the framework of services to the industry. Concrete cracking, crushing, creep, shrinkage, reinforcement yielding, etc. can be included in the analysis methods in order to simulate more realistic behaviour of concrete. As such, numerical calculations enable to save resources (materials, money and time), help to understand certain phenomena in a more profound way and allow to predict the structural behaviour. Further, specialized calculations are also applied in the field of concrete technology, quality control, structural reliability and durability.
More specifically, specialized calculations are amongst others performed in the framework of:
- Hydration modeling and modeling of concrete properties
- Determining the load carrying capacity of structural concrete elements and structures
- Analysis of crack width and deformations considering nonlinear behavior
- Creep and shrinkage effects
- Structural fire analysis of concrete structures
- Push-over analysis for performance based design
- Analysis of the effect of reinforcement detailing
- Analysis of the effect of steel fibres or non-metalic reinforcement
- Statistical analysis and quality control
- Structural reliability and failure probability
- Service life design and life-cycle analysis of concrete structures
- and many other applications…
Besides analytical and spreadsheet based numerical models, various more advanced calculation and analysis tools are at our disposal, among which:
- DIANA (TNO DIANA) (Nonlinear Finite Element Analysis of Concrete Structures)
- ATENA (Cervenka Consulting) (Nonlinear Finite Element Analysis of Concrete Structures)
- Buildsoft (Structural Design Analysis Software) and Scia Engineer
- FreET and SARA (Cervenka Consulting) (Risk Analysis Software)
- COMREL, SYSREL and STATREL (RCP GmbH) (Risk Analysis Software)
- Matlab (Technical Computing Software) and Labview
- Numerous in-house developed software packages for specific purposes
Examples
In many cases these calculations are combined with experimental work in order to verify the accuracy or to ameliorate existing models.
FEM model and cracking pattern for the analysis of punching in structural analysis of concrete plates
Deformation and stress analysis of specific cross-sectional design situations
FEM model for the analysis of membrane actions in the framework of robustness analysis
Deformation and yielding stress in case of membrane actions in concrete slabs
Heat transfer analysis in concrete beams
Nonlinear deformation of concrete frames subjected to fire
Random field modeling of concrete properties
Nonlinear probabilistic finite element analysis in the framework of structural reliability
Multiscale hydration modelling of ternary blended cement based paste