Refinement of an inverse analysis procedure for estimating tensile constitutive law of UHPC

Abstract

As regard to cementitious composite materials added a certain dosage of fiber, estimation of tensile constitutive law through inverse analysis methods is no longer extraordinary. However, development or improvement to achieve an effective method for estimating such a tensile behavior of fiber reinforced concrete (FRC) or Ultra high-performance concrete (UHPC) is still an interesting topic to researchers. In this respect, the paper presents a development of inverse analysis method developed by Lopez to obtain the stress-strain behavior of UHPC from the four-point bending test. By applying optimization algorithm into the iterative procedure of method, an improvement could be obtained for the inverse analysis with a high degree of automation in calculation. A post-process treatment for inverse analysis results is also proposed to bring a finer agreement between the tensile behavior curve obtained by the inverse analysis and result curve of uniaxial tensile test (UTT). The effectivity of process is shown through a comparison between the result obtained by the proposed method and the result in Lopez’s public paper.

Keywords

• inverse analysis
• ultra-high-performance concrete
• tensile constitutive law
• four-point bending test
• uniaxial tensile test