Numerical modeling on concrete structures and steel–concrete composite frame structures

A steel–concrete composite fiber beam-column model is developed in this study. The composite fiber beam-column model consists of a preprocessor program that is used to divide a composite section into fibers and a group of uniaxial hysteretic material constitutive models coded in the user defined subprogram UMAT in ABAQUS. The steel–concrete composite fiber beam-column model is suitable for global elasto-plastic analysis on composite frames with rigid connections subjected to the combined action of gravity and cyclic lateral loads. The model is verified by a large number of experiments and the results show that the developed composite fiber model possesses better accuracy and broader applicability compared with a traditional finite element model. Although the fiber beam-column model neglects the slip between the steel beam and concrete slab, there are essentially no effects on the global calculation results of steel–concrete composite frames. The proposed model has a simple modeling procedure, high calculation efficiency and great advantage when it is used to analyze composite frames subjected to cyclic loading due to earthquake.