failure strain

[newman]

For failure strain of reinforce material, for example for reinforcment with fy=400 MPa, the failur strain is more than 0.14. When I was studing your verificatiob reports, the maximum value of this strain for all of your examples is 0.1.
In my models, when I use 0.1 (although I should have used 0.16 based on failure curve of the reinforcment material) the results was matched very well with the ecperimental results, but, when I use 0.16 (or other higher value than 0.1) my results were not matched.
I need to have more details about considering failure value for strain if reinforcement.
When I see the curves of reinforcement in other references, I see that all of them failed at a strain more than 0.1. Please give me some explenation about this 0.1 which is also used in all of your verification report examples (your files).

[huffte]

Hi Newman. The failure strain of reinforcing bars varies a good bit I would say. Depending upon the specification (in the US, A615 versus A706, for example), there is a guaranteed minimum failure strain. But even within a given specification, one set of bars could have a failure strain only slightly higher than the minimum, while another set of bars might have a value much higher than the minimum. Values less than the minimum are typically used in seismic design provisions to allow for some extra capacity. But it sounds as though you are trying to match experimental results, in which case it would seem that you would want to test the bars to failure and use that value in your seismostruct model. But your supervisor and you would best determine the strategy to use. Best of luck, newman.