Numerical damage investigation for RC slab-column connections

This article presents a numerical Concrete Damage-Plastic (CDP) model for investigating the complex behavior of the RC slab-column connection under monotonic loading. The proposed numerical model is verified versus both the experimental data from the literature and various international design codes of practices, as well. The basic CDP model parameters (i.e. concrete dilation angle, the shape of the yield surface in the deviatoric plane, the softening simulation behavior, and the fracture energy) will be calibrated. Then, a comprehensive numerical investigation is conducted for studying the influences of different design variables. The numerical investigation also focuses on the damage initiation, propagation and evolution for a very wide range of connections cases. The numerical results displayed the ability of the calibrated CDP model to predict with fair accuracy the overall behavior of the connection demonstrating the impact of each investigated parameter. (C) 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Faculty of Engineering, Ain Shams University.