Development of a EFG formulation for damage analysis of reinforced concrete beams

In this work the element-free Galerkin (EFG) method is used for damage analysis of reinforced concrete beams. The chosen damage model is that due to Mazars whereby the concrete is represented by an elastic medium with progressive damage. As usual in the EFG method, moving least squares (MLS) approximations are considered. The essential boundary conditions are included by means of Lagrange multipliers. A method is proposed to accurately represent concentrated loads, inhomogeneities or geometry. The proposed method is, basically, a domain decomposition technique where, at the interface, a weak form of continuity is enforced with Lagrange multipliers. Numerical tests are carried out on a reinforced concrete beam for which experimental as well as other numerical results are available in the literature.