Inelastic behavior modelling of concrete in low and high strain rate dynamics

This work deals with response modeling of concrete for dynamic loading. As in statics one has to account for substantial difference of inelastic response in tension and compression, the anisotropy of the response induced by complex cracking patterns and the need of irreversible deformation due to frictional sliding or non-closing cracks. On the top of that, in dynamics, we also have to handle the hardening or softening phenomena which explain a particular hysteretic response for a given cyclic loading as well as the strain rate effects. The latter should further be addressed separately for high as opposed to low strain rates. The main goal of this work is to develop the concrete constitutive model capable of reproducing the salient features experimentally observed. We present one theoretical development for the constitutive model of concrete at low strain rates. The same, kind of developments are then carried out for high strain dynamic behavior. Both chosen models belong to the class of coupled plasticity damage models briefly presented. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.