Keywords: fibre reinforced concrete, finite element method, plasticity, smeared reinforcement.

Fibre reinforced concrete is one of materials that has attracted building engineers and researchers for a long time. It can provide better material properties than plain concrete (especially in tension) and in some cases it also can behave better than conventional reinforced concrete. The term "fibre reinforced concrete" covers vast area of concrete-based materials that use reinforcement in the form of small fibres.

This paper discusses selected aspects of numerical remodelling of concrete with steel fibres. The reason for studying rather traditional materials is the possibility of experimental verification of modelling results because of the available experimental base and the tradition in material research in this area at the VSB-TU of Ostrava [1].

The discussed approaches have been implemented into an in-house finite element code and have been continuously tested and verified. If the need for numerical modelling of concrete does not include a requirement of modelling of progressive post-peak behaviour of structure then an elasto-plastic material model can be used. Its advantages over more precise constitutive models (that are usually based on fracture mechanics theories) are simpler material inputs and often also lighter computational requirements.

The constitutive model used, is based on use of the Chen-Chen [2] criteria and the Ohtani-Chen hardening model with approximation of the hardening parameters using the Ramberg-Osgood function. Fibres are modelled with use of the smeared reinforcement approach with some attention to their bond with concrete.

1

J.R. Cigánek, A. Materna, "Computational Verification of Experimental Research on Fibre Reinforced Concrete", in B.H.V. Topping, M. Papadrakakis, (Editors), "Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Computational Structures Technology", Civil-Comp Press, Stirlingshire, UK, Paper 229, 2008. doi:10.4203/ccp.88.229

2

A.C.T. Chen, W.F. Chen, "Constitutive Relations for Concrete", Journal of the Engineering Mechanics Division ASCE, 1975.

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