NONLINEAR ANALYSIS OF REINFORCED CONCRETE BEAMS WITH SECANT METHOD

Resumo

This work aims to develop and implement a model to perform structural analysis of reinforced con-
crete beams using the Finite Element Method, considering the physical nonlinear behavior of materials using

moment-curvature diagrams calculated before structural analysis. A finite element model for nonlinear analysis
of reinforced concrete beams based on moment-curvature relationships was developed and implemented, adopting

the Euler-Bernoulli beam element and using the iterative secant method for solving the resulting system of non-
linear equations. This model was implemented through computational routines and validated by comparisons with

results from numerical and experimental examples in the literature. With the results obtained in the examples, it
was concluded that the computational routines for nonlinear analysis of reinforced concrete beams proved to be
accurate and efficient, and can be used to verify the deformations in service and analysis in ultimate limit state
of reinforced concrete beams under bending, provided a finite element mesh sufficiently refined at the points of
maximum effort is employed.