Curvature ductility of concrete element under high strain-rates

Considerable amount of studies on the ductility and flexural behaviour of normal and high strength concrete elements under static load can be found in literature. However, most of the previous theoretical investigations on moment-curvature (M-φ) relationship of concrete elements to calculate curvature ductility and flexural capacity did not take account of the strain-rate effect on the material models. M-φ analysis of concrete elements under dynamic loading are often conducted with material models developed for quasi-static load by applying Dynamic Increase Factors (DIF) to the material properties to reflect the strain-rate effect. Depending on magnitude and duration of applied dynamic load, element stiffness and boundary condition strain-rate varies over the cross section. Thus, the application of DIF to modify peak material properties often fails to reflect the strain-rate effect reliably. The improvement of using material model which incorporated strain-rate in its constitutive equations has been explored in this study. The effects of reinforcement amount, grade and concrete strength on curvature ductility for different strain rates have been studied using material models which have strain-rate effects included in theirs formulation. Based on the parametric study, a simple formula to estimate curvature ductility for concrete elements under explosive loads (high strain-rates) has been proposed.