7 th EUROMECH Solid Mechanics Conference J. Ambrosio et.al. (eds.) Lisbon, Portugal, 7–11 September 2009 DEVELOPMENT OF AN ENHANCED SOLID ELEMENT FOR MODELING OF REINFORCED CONCRETE STRUCTURES Norberto Dominguez 1 , Luc Davenne 2 , and Adnan Ibrahimbegovic 2 1 Secci´ on de Estudios de Posgrado e Investigaci´ on, Escuela Superior de Ingenier´ ıa y Arquitectura (SEPI-ESIA), UP-ALM, Instituto Polit´ ecnico Nacional Av. Juan de Dios B´ atiz s/n edif. 12, 07738 M´ exico D.F., M´ exico e-mail: ndominguez@ipn.mx 2 Laboratoire de M´ ecanique et Technologie (LMT), ENS-Cachan/UPMC/CNRS/PRES Univer Sud Paris 61 Avenue du Pr´ esident Wilson, F-94230 Cachan, France e-mail: {ldavenne,ai}@lmt.ens-cachan.fr Keywords: Reinforced Concrete Structures, XFEM, Computational Mechanics, Bonding, Non Linear Behavior. Abstract. Reinforced Concrete (RC) is one of the most important construction materials that is used in several ordinary and complex structures as buildings, bridges, nuclear central plants, or even ships. Considering its hybrid nature, that means, a mixed relationship of concrete, steel and bonding (each of them with a particular non linear behavior and kinematics), it is very difficult to model the realistic mechanical behavior of the RC set: for this reason, it is very common to assume an homogeneized cross-section for practical design. In this work we present a new kind of Finite Element: the ”RC Enhanced Solid Element (ESE)” which is able to handle the dissipative material behavior of each component (concrete damage, steel plasticity, bonding deterioration) and their different deformations, as well as simplifying its implementation for engineering applications. Inspired in some of the XFEM techniques, we represent kinematics of steel rebar and bonding by enhacing the number of degrees of freedom per node. 1