Analytical examination of mesh-dependency issue for uniaxial RC elements and new fracture energy-based regularization technique

Abstract

This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the mesh-dependency issue for both plain concrete and reinforced concrete (RC) members under uniaxial loading. The detailed mechanisms for each case are firstly derived, and the analytical and numerical strain energies for concrete in different cases are compared to explain the phenomena of mesh-dependency. It is found that the mesh-dependency will be relieved or even eliminated with the increasing of the reinforcing ratio. Meanwhile, a concept of the critical reinforcing ratio is proposed to identify the corresponding boundary of mesh-dependency of RC members. In order to verify the above findings, several illustrative examples are performed and discussed. Finally, to overcome the mesh-dependency issue for RC members with lower reinforcing ratios, we propose a unified regularization method that modifies both stress-strain relations of steel and concrete based on the strain energy equivalence. The method is also applied to the illustrative examples for validation, and the numerical results indicate that the developed method can obtain objective results for cases with different meshes and reinforcing ratios.