Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
of equations can be solved and the unknown parameter found. Substituting these values back
to each element formulation provides the distributions of stress and displacement everywhere
within each element. This solution procedure is called 'finite element analysis' (FEA). The
concept of FEA comes from the idea of discretization and numerical approximation.
In many reinforced concrete (RC) structures, beams and columns can be simulated by
1-D fiber elements. Some other RC structures, such as shear walls, deep girders, nuclear
containment vessels, and offshore platforms, can be visualized as assemblies of plane stress
(membrane) elements, as shown in Figure 9.1. The behavior of each whole structures can be
predicted by performing FEA.
Figure 9.1
Discretization of RC structures into membrane elements
