Finite element simulation of a motorway bridge collapse using the concrete damage plasticity model

Abstract

The aim of this work is to show how the concrete damage plasticity model developed by Lubliner et al. can be applied for calculation of a motorway bridge collapse occurred in the Amur region, Russia. The concrete structural behaviour is highly complex. Being a quasi-brittle material, concrete demonstrates softening behaviour that is numerically complex due to the loss of positive definiteness of the tangent rigidity matrix of the material, and hence the loss of the ellipticity of the equilibrium rate equation. This eventually leads to the loss of well-posedness of the rate boundary value problem. Besides that, concrete behaviour in compression differs from that in tension. There are a few different failure modes of concrete material: tension cracking, compression crushing, spalling of concrete, etc.