A tension stiffening model for analysis of RC flexural members under service load

Tension-stiffening is the contribution of concrete between the cracks to carry tensile stresses after cracking in Reinforced Concrete (RC) members. In this paper, a tension-stiffening model has been proposed for computationally efficient nonlinear analysis of RC flexural members subjected to service load. The proposed model has been embedded in a typical cracked span length beam element. The element is visualized to consist of at the most five zones (cracked or uncracked). Closed form expressions for flexibility and stiffness coefficients and end displacements have been obtained for the cracked span length beam element. Further, for use in everyday design, a hybrid analytical-numerical procedure has been developed for nonlinear analysis of RC flexural members using the proposed tension-stiffening model. The procedure yields deflections as well as redistributed bending moments. The proposed model (and developed procedure) has been validated by the comparison with experimental results reported elsewhere and also by comparison with the Finite Element Method (FEM) results. The procedure would lead to drastic reduction in computational time in case of large RC structures.