BACKGROUND

•The use of stainless steel reinforcing bars in reinforced concrete structures is a promising solution to corrosion issues.

•To be used in seismic applications, their mechanical properties need to be investigated.

•A research task was initiated at MCEER (Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research, SUNY, Buffalo) in 2008 to test them experimentally.

•Low-cycle fatigue tests of the bars were conducted at MCEER under strain control with constant amplitude to obtain the strain life models of the bars.

•Low-cycle fatigue analysis of 316LN stainless steel rebars has been performed in this work using Abaqus, Isight and fe-safe, and the results have been compared with MCEER experimental testing data.

ABAQUS SIMULATION OF SPECIMEN LOADING CYCLE

•Nonlinear kinematic hardening model based on cyclic stress-strain data.

•Initial transient behavior not important since the material comes to a stabilized cyclic response easily.

•Finer mesh around the central region to better capture stress distribution using C3D20R elements.

ISIGHT OPTIMIZATION OF SPECIMEN ELONGATION

•Elongation of the specimen during Abaqus simulation of the loading cycle was optimized using Isight to match the strains recorded in 6 experiments (0.99, 1.28, 1.5, 1.77, 2.1 and 2.4 %).

•This later allows for the direct comparison of fe-safe fatigue analysis results with experimental data.

FE-SAFE LOW-CYCLE FATIGUE ANALYSIS

•Stress-strain datasets for the loading cycles are imported from the 6 elastic-plastic Abaqus models into fe-safe.

•316 Stainless Steel in fe-safe Material Database used for fatigue properties.

•Surface finish of Kt=1 (mirror polished) used to match the test specimen used for the experiment.

•Brown-Miller Algorithm with Morrow mean stress correction used.

COMPARISON OF SIMULATION RESULT WITH EXPERIMENT

REFERENCES

- A Pilot Experimental Study on the Low Cycle Fatigue Behavior of Stainless Steel Rebars for Earthquake Engineering Applications; Yihui Zhou, Yu-Chen Ou, George C. Lee, and Jerome S. O’Connor; University at Buffalo; August, 2008

- Simulation of Low Cycle Fatigue with Abaqus/FEA; K.K.G.K.D.Kariyawasam and H.M.Y.C. Mallikarachchi; 3rd International Symposium on Advances in Civil and Environmental Engineering Practices for Sustainable Development (ACEPS – 2015)

* This work is meant for demonstration purposes only