Application of direct tension force transfer model with modified fixed-angle softened-truss model to finite element analysis of steel fiber-reinforced concrete members subjected to Shear

Steel fiber-reinforced concrete (SFRC) is known as one of the efficient modern composites that can greatly enhance the material performance of cracked concrete in tension. Such improved tensile resistance mechanism at crack interfaces in SFRC members can be heavily influenced by methodologies of treatments of crack direction. While most existing studies have focused on developing the numerical analysis model with the rotating-angle theory, there are only few studies on finite element analysis models with the fixed-angle model approach. According to many existing experimental studies, the direction of principal stress rotated after the formation of initial fixed-cracks, but it was also observed that new cracks with completely different angles relative to the initial crack direction very rarely occurred. Therefore, this study introduced the direct tension force transfer model (DTFTM), in which tensile resistance of the fibers at the crack interface can be easily estimated, to the nonlinear finite element analysis algorithm with the fixed-angle theory, and the proposed model was also verified by comparing the analysis results to the SFRC shear panel test results. The secant modulus method adopted in this study for iterative calculations in nonlinear finite element analysis showed highly stable and fast convergence capability when it was applied to the fixed-angle theory. The deviation angle between the principal stress direction and the fixed-crack direction significantly increased as the tensile stresses in the steel fibers at crack interfaces increased, which implies that the deviation angle is very important in the estimation of the shear behavior of SFRC members.