Steel‐Concrete Bond Analysis with Nonlocal Continuous Damage

This paper deals with the application of continuum damage mechanics to the description of the response of reinforced concrete members. Two simplifying assumptions are made: (1) The constitutive law of concrete is the isotropic damage law; and (2) there are no displacement discontinuities at the interface between steel and concrete (this last statement is probably true only if ribbed reinforcing bars are considered). Numerical implementations face the same pathological difficulties related to strain softening and damage localization in shear bands near the steel bars. This problem and its consequence, mesh‐dependency, were solved by using the “nonlocal continuum with local strain” approach. Predictions of pull‐out tests are in very good agreement with test data, including size effect data. The study shows that it is possible to extend the nonlocal damage approach easily to the prediction of the response of reinforced concrete structures.