Seismosoft | Earthquake Engineering Solutions

Dear developers

There is a lack of a recent type of concrete type that is currently present in the research field. It is called UHPC (Ultra High Performance Concrete). This is vastly used in bridge piers typically as a concrete jacket for strengthening technique. There is no suitable concrete model in Seismostruct to model its properties and behaviour. This type of concrete has strengths exceeding 150 MPa.

The concrete model con_hs programmed by Kappos and Konstantinidis [1999] covers strengths from 50MPa to 120MPa as mentioned in seismostruct help. Also, I would appreciate if you could provide a verification example of using con_hs to validate its high strength properties as I am not able to notice any significant change while incorporating con_hs in some of my models.

Roshen

Thank you for your recommendation, which we will consider for a new version of SeismoStruct.
Regarding the behaviour of the con_hs, the main difference in the response with respect to the con_ma model is the descending branch (high strength concrete is much more brittle), which is probably why you do not notice any significant difference (if your model does not go deep in the inelastic region).
Seismosoft Support

Dear developers
I agree very well with the recommendation of Roshen>>>> the researcher very needs Ultra High Performance Concrete built-in model in sesimostruct

Dear Roshen, dear Amr Masoud,

Personally, it is not clear to me why a new constitutive model would need to be implemented in SeismoStruct in order to be able to analyse structures with UHPC.

Indeed, I would immagine that, by appropriately setting the parameters of one of the already implemented material models, one could readily capture the response of UHPC.

Would it be possible for you to provide a concrete example of a UHPC stress-strain relationship, and explain why it cannot be currently modelled in SeismoStruct?

Cheers,

Rui