Carbon Fiber Truss

Ultra-High Performance Concrete (UHPC) is a next-generation concrete known for its exceptional compressive strength, low porosity, and high durability. Despite these advantages, UHPC beams can still experience shear failure, particularly because UHPC, like traditional concrete, has relatively low tensile strength and can be brittle in shear-dominant regions.

To address this, the study investigates the use of carbon fiber truss reinforcement in UHPC beams. Carbon fiber, being lightweight, non-corrosive, and high in tensile strength, provides an innovative alternative to conventional steel stirrups for shear reinforcement. The research aims to analyze the shearing behavior of these beams and develop a reliable predictive model for their shear capacity.

The concrete-damaged plasticity model is selected to model the UHPC beam in Abaqus. This continuum, plasticity-based damage model for concrete assumes that the two main failure mechanisms are tensile cracking and compressive crushing of the concrete material.

To model fiber damage in Abaqus, Hahsin’s damage criterion is used. Damage initiation refers to the onset of degradation at a material point. In Abaqus, the damage initiation criteria for fiber-reinforced composites are based on Hashin’s theory. These criteria consider four different damage initiation mechanisms: fiber tension, fiber compression, matrix tension, and matrix compression.

Both static and dynamic approaches are used in this tutorial. The proper interactions, constraints, load, and boundaries are assigned to all parts. The mesh should be fine to obtain the correct results

This example is close to this paper here: Theoretical and Experimental Study on Shearing Capacity of Concrete Beams Reinforced with Carbon Fiber Truss