A computational plastic-damage method for modeling the FRP strengthening of concrete arches

In this paper, a computational technique is presented based on a concrete plastic-damage model to investigate the effect of FRP strengthening of reinforced concrete arches. A plastic-damage model was utilized to capture the behavior of concrete. The interface between the FRP and concrete was modeled using a cohesive fracture model. In order to validate the accuracy of the damage-plastic model, a single element was employed under monotonic tension, monotonic compression, and cyclic tension loads. An excellent agreement was observed between the predenfied strain-stress curve and that obtained by the numerical model. Furthermore, the accuracy of the cohesive fracture model was investigated by comparing the numerical results with those of experimental data. Finally, in order to verify the accuracy of the proposed computational algorithm, the results were compared with the experimental data obtained through two tests conducted on reinforced concrete arches strengthened with FRP.