A phenomenologically based damage model for strain-softening fiber reinforced concrete

In this paper, a phenomenologically based damage model is developed based on the Kandarpa model, compared with other models, which can more accurately predict the damage evolution process of fiber-reinforced concrete in terms of the strain-softening phase under uniaxial compression. The presented phenomenologically based damage model can be used for theoretically evaluating the reliability close to the absolute fracture failure. In order to verify the developed phenomenologically based damage model, a novel concrete composite material of palm fiber is used to conduct uniaxial compression experiments. And, it is worth noting that strain-softening of palm fiber-reinforced concrete has rarely been reported before. A comparison of the palm fiber-reinforced concrete compression test results with the predicted results shows that the goodness of fit R2 maintained more than 0.959, which indicates that the model proposed in this paper has good accuracy. Moreover, in comparison with other people's models, the prediction results of the model in this paper are closer to the experimental results, especially after the peak point. Besides, the model's parameters analysis is implemented to understand the developed model's applications better.