Ultimate strength analysis of prestressed reinforced concrete sections under axial force and biaxial bending

A secant approach is illustrated for the ultimate limit state (ULS) analysis of prestressed reinforced concrete sections subjected to axial load and biaxial bending in presence of softening stress–strain laws. The stiffness matrix and the resultant loads are evaluated analytically by a novel methodology, termed fiber-free, which represents a computationally efficient alternative to fiber approaches. Extensive computations of the ULS domains of benchmark test cases show that the robustness of the proposed algorithmic strategy is substantially unaffected by the amount of reinforcement, prestressing and softening, though localized non-convex regions have been occasionally experienced in presence of softening.