Advances in Engineering Software 33 (2002) 227±242

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Biaxial bending with axial force of reinforced, composite and repaired

concrete sections of arbitrary shape by ®ber model and computer graphics
M.G. Sfakianakis*
Structural Engineering Division, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Patras, GR 265 00 Patras, Greece
Received 20 August 2001; accepted 28 November 2001

Abstract
A new method is proposed for the study of the failure mechanism of reinforced concrete sections of arbitrary shape in biaxial bending with
axial force. The procedure is an alternative ®ber model which employs computer graphics as a computational tool for the integration of
normal stresses over the section area. In addition to the cases of classic reinforced concrete sections with longitudinal reinforcement steel
bars, the method is extended to sections of reinforced concrete structural members repaired by jackets as well as to members with composite
steel±concrete sections. Such a computational tool satis®es the needs of nonlinear analysis of reinforced concrete structures as well as the
needs of the daily design practice. The method does not include any iterative procedure within its steps and thus it does not have the
disadvantage of possible nonconvergence. On the other hand, it is fast and gives accurate results. Four representative numerical applications
of the method are presented for the clari®cation of its validity and advantages. q 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Biaxial bending; Fiber model; Computer graphics; Failure surface; Bounding surface; Design charts; Reinforced concrete jacket; Composite section

1. Introduction
The failure of any reinforced concrete cross-section under
bending, for a given value of a compressive or tensile axial
load, corresponds to the top of the curve of the moment±
curvature diagrams. Thus, in the triaxial space which is
de®ned by the axial load and the two components of the
bending moment, the resulting failure moments for various
values of the axial load form a close surface, known as
failure or bounding surface of the cross-section. An inner
surface, almost similar in shape to the failure surface, is the
conventional failure surface, which corresponds to points
lower than those on top of the moment±curvature diagrams.
These points are de®ned by the design codes by means of
prede®ned maximum allowable strains of the most
compressive and of the most tensile vertex of the cross-
section. Usually, these strains correspond to the yield strain
of the two materials (steel and concrete). Meridians and
isoload equators of the conventional failure surfaces form
the well-known design charts used in daily practice. Such
design charts have been constructed by the use of numerical
algorithms for the majority of the usual cross-sectional
shapes (orthogonal, circular, etc.). For cross-section shapes
other than these classical ones, simpli®ed assumptions are
* Tel.: 130-61-997-748; fax: 130-61-996-154.
E-mail address: mgs@upatras.gr (M.G. Sfakianakis).
0965-9978/02/$ - see front matter q 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0965-997 8(02)00002-9
made for the design. On the other hand, for the needs of
nonlinear analysis, the detailed knowledge of the failure
surface is extremely important since the plastic deforma-
tions of a structural element are functions of its load history
and of the distance of its load vector from this surface. The
`bounding surface' concept was originally developed for
metals [6], and then was appropriately applied to soils [5]
and concrete [9,10]. Until now, most of the existing models
for the nonlinear behavior of reinforced concrete structural
elements under normal actions (biaxial bending with axial
load) assume the shape of the bounding surface known and
described by closed form relationships (i.e. ellipsoid). An
exception to this trend, is the model of Sfakianakis and
Fardis [20] for orthogonal cross-sections, in which the
size and shape of the bounding surface is computed by
means of closed form relationships. Further research [11±
15] showed that the shape and size of these surfaces solely
depend on section geometry, longitudinal reinforcement
amount and the way it is placed in the section. On the
other hand, it is quite dif®cult and time consuming to
produce closed form relationships for these surfaces, as it
was done earlier for the orthogonal section. Thus, numerical
procedures are necessary. In this direction, several
algorithms have been proposed for the study of a cross-
section under biaxial bending with combined normal force
[1,2,7,13,19,23]. Alternatively, design equations have been
proposed by other researchers. The parameter calibration of
228 M.G. Sfakianakis / Advances in Engineering Software 33 (2002) 227±242
Fig. 1. (a) Typical failure surface, (b) neutral axis positions.
these equations has been based on experimental results or
results obtained by the use of ®ber models [8,11,12,15,18].
In this paper a new general method, based on computer
graphics, is presented for the construction of the full shape
and size of the failure surface of reinforced concrete
sections of arbitrary shape. The general case is a polygonal
(convex or not) cross-sectional shape, which includes open-
ings and reinforced with longitudinal reinforcement steel
bars and/or structural steel (composite section). Moreover,
the case of repaired structural elements by concrete jackets
(full or partial) is included. The main idea of the method is
the use of computer graphics capabilities as an indirect
computational tool in the classical ®ber method. Thus, any
previous numerical problems or large computer storage
demands are fully eliminated.
2. Geometrical de®nition of the failure surface
The failure surface of an arbitrary cross-section in the N±
My ±Mz space, can be de®ned as the geometrical locus of
points …N; My ; Mz † which correspond to the ultimate strength
of the section. The result is a closed surface which cannot be
described by simple relationships of closed form. This
surface fully depends on the detailed section geometry, on
its reinforcement amount and on the way it is placed inside
it. Fig. 1(a) shows meridians of a typical failure surface
which correspond to speci®c angle locations u n of the
neutral axis in the section plane, with respect to the My
axis (Fig. 1(b)).
In general, the angles a i and a j of two meridional points
which belong to two equators of distance DN between them,
are not equal to u n but usually have a small divergence from
this value. In other words, a ˆ tan21 …Mz =My † ± un : This
means that the meridians are not always plane. This is due
to secondary moments that may occur about the axis j ± j
perpendicular to the neutral axis n±n; which passes through
the origin of the section Cartesian system Y±Z (Fig. 1(b)).
These secondary moments about the axis j ± j may happen
because of possible variations of concrete and steel stresses
from both sides of this axis. This variation depends on the
unsymmetry of the cross-section and on any unsymmetric
distribution of the longitudinal reinforcement bars too. For
example, if the cross-section is circular and the longitudinal
reinforcement bars are distributed uniformly around its peri-
meter, the failure surface is axisymmetric, and all its meri-
dians are identical. For polygonal cross-sections with 458
rotational symmetry and a uniform distribution of the rein-
forcement bars, all eight meridians of the failure surface at
458 intervals are also identical, and the assumption of
axisymmetry gives a good approximation to the shape of
the failure surface. If the cross-section is rectangular and its
reinforcement is equally divided among its four sides, the
failure surface exhibits symmetry with respect to the four
meridional planes M y ˆ 0; Mz ˆ 0; and My ˆ ^Mz : Its four
meridians in the former two planes have identical shape, and
the same holds for the four others in the latter. A clear
example of the effect of unsymmetry (partial or not) is the
U-shaped cross-section, of Fig. 2. Almost all the meridians
of the failure surface in this section are plane. For example,
consider a uniaxial imposed curvature w ˆ wy for un ˆ 08:
Although the only expected moment is that of 2My, a
secondary moment ^Mz (very small in value) is produced
due to the fact that the application point of the resultant
force of the material internal forces may not lie on
the Z axis. The sign of this secondary moment mainly
depends on the compressive zone depth. Thus, even
though axis Y is an axis of symmetry, secondary
moments about axis Z are inevitable. In general, these
secondary moments rotate a little the moment vector M
and make it nonparallel to the cross-section neutral axis
n±n: Herein, a ± un ˆ 08:
 M.G. Sfakianakis / Advances in Engineering Software 33 (2002) 227±242 229

Fig. 2. Secondary moments due to section unsymmetry.

3. Construction of the failure surface
Consider the general case of an arbitrary cross-section
shape with a reinforced concrete jacket (Fig. 3). The initial
cross-section has longitudinal reinforcement steel bars, a
structural steel ¯anged section (composite section) and
one or more openings. Assume that the two concretes (in
the section and the jacket) as well as the three kinds of
reinforcement (structural steel, reinforcement bars of initial
section and those of the jacket) have different compressive
strengths. The concrete cross-section with the opening is
described by the coordinates of its vertices in the centroidal
coordinate system YGC ±ZGC, where GC is the geometrical
centroid of the section. All longitudinal reinforcement bars
are described in the same system by their center coordinates
and diameter, B. Finally, the structural steel section is
described in the same manner as the concrete cross-section.
In the following, the notation C2, C1, S2, and S1 refers to
the most outer concrete (C) and steel (S) vertices of the total
cross-section, normally to the neutral axis, which are in
tension (1) and compression (2) state. If the section does
not have a jacket, then points C2, C1, S2, and S1 are those of
the initial cross-section. For the jacket case, they are
replaced by the points C2J, C1J, S2J, and S1J (Fig. 3).
Assuming stress-resultants space is independent of the
loading path, the failure surface can be easily constructed
for monotonic-proportional loading. Herein, the surface is
constructed equator-by-equator. For given values of the
axial load N (i.e. a speci®c equator), the angle u n and the
position Zn of the neutral axis, increments Dw of curvature
are applied (Fig. 3). This increment is controlled by the
parameter 1 C2, which is the maximum compressive strain
at the extreme and the most compressive vertex of the
section. For this angle location, u n, and position, Zn, of the
neutral axis, it moves normally to its direction at small steps
of ^Dd until it ®nds a position for which the internal axial
load is in equilibrium with the external one. For this ®nal
position, Zn ^ Dd; primary moment My and secondary

Fig. 3. Strain and stress diagrams for imposed curvature.

230 M.G. Sfakianakis / Advances in Engineering Software 33 (2002) 227±242
moment Mz (if any) are computed. Axes Y and Z are parallel
and perpendicular to the neutral axis n±n; respectively.
Finally, moments My-GC and Mz-GC are computed by a simple
rotational transformation between systems Y±Z and YGC ±
ZGC. The procedure is repeated for all possible neutral axis
positions Zn, starting from a location of Zn # ZC2 (all
sections in tension), until a position Zn $ ZC2 (all sections
in compression). Intermediate values ZC2 , Zn , ZC1 cover
the case where the neutral axis lies inside the cross-section.
This range of Zn covers the complete range N of the axial
load. For each value of Zn, u n is given in the range 0±3608 at
prede®ned steps Du n (i.e. Du n ˆ 158).
With this procedure, the full moment±curvature diagrams
…M±w† are obtained. The top of these diagrams corresponds
to points of the failure surface (Fig. 4).
Thus, the failure surface is constructed point-by-point
considering a large number of M±w diagrams and then
taking the maximum (top) moment values of them.
For the case of the conventional failure surface, according
to the codes, the earlier procedure is accelerated by omitting
the construction of the M±w diagrams and applying directly
the prede®ned values of strains 1C2 and 1S1 (which corre-
spond to prede®ned curvatures) as they are described by the
codes. The range of Zn and u n values is taken into account as
previously. If the section has one or more axes of symmetry,
then only a part of the complete u n range is used.
In the following sections, the assumptions and material
properties, as well as the procedure for the computation of
the internal moments and axial load are described in detail.
4. Assumptions and material properties
The proposed method is based on the following ®ve
assumptions:
1. According to the Bernouli±Euler assumption, plane
Fig. 4. Typical moment-curvature diagrams, M± w .
sections before deformation remain plane after deforma-
tion. Thus, in the Y±Z local system, the strain at any point
of the cross-section, with coordinates …y; z†; is a linear
function of its perpendicular to the neutral axis distance
z (Fig. 3).
2. The compression stress±strain relationship used for
concrete is that given in Fig. 5(a). The ascending part
of this curve, until the maximum strength, is represented
by a parabola, while the descending part, until the limit
strain 1 cu is represented by a straight line with slope Z p.
Alternatively, for the conventional surface, the Eurocode
2 [3] uses simpli®ed stress±strain relationships. In both
cases, the tensile strength of concrete is neglected.
3. The structural steel (if any) and the steel reinforcement
bars are assumed to be elastic until the yield strain 1 y, and
perfectly plastic for strains between 1 y and the hardening
strain or until the limit strain 1 su, according to the Euro-
code 2 [3] (Fig. 5(b)).
4. The failure surface corresponds to strains 1 cu of the most
outer compressed vertex of the section, which in turn
correspond to the top of the moment±curvature …M±w†
diagrams. The conventional failure surface of the EC2
[3] corresponds to prede®ned strains 1 C2 and 1 S1, for the
most outer compressed and tensioned vertices,
respectively.
5. Strains and stresses are taken into account with their
signs (negative for compression and positive for tension).
The s ± 1 law for concrete is that proposed by Tassios
[21]. The parabolic and the linear part of this law are given
by the relations
!
1c 1c
s c ˆ bc fc p 2 2 p ; 1c $ 1p0 …1a†
10 10


s c ˆ bc fc 1 1 zp 1c 2 1p0 ; 1c , 1p0 …1b†
 M.G. Sfakianakis / Advances in Engineering Software 33 (2002) 227±242
Fig. 5. Material s ± 1 laws for: (a) concrete, and (b) steel.
where
1p0 ˆ b2c 1co ; 1co ù 20:002 …
bc 2 0:85
zp ˆ
…1d†
bc 0:10avw 1 0:0035 1 1p0
The increase in the concrete strength due to con®nement by
the transverse reinforcement is taken into account through
the coef®cient b c. This coef®cient is a function of the
mechanical volumetric ratio v w of stirrups (the total volume
of con®ning stirrup legs times their yield strength fyw
divided by the volume of the con®ned concrete core times
its uniaxial compressive strength fc), and the effectiveness
factor a, which takes into account the total number of bars
that belong to stirrup corners. More speci®cally [21]
bc ˆ 1 1 avw …
P

lw Asw fyw
vw ˆ …
sAc;core fc
where fyw is the yield stress of the transverse reinforcement,
s is the clear space between the stirrups, Ac;core is the
concrete core area inside the stirrups, Asw is the section
P of a stirrup, fc is the concrete nominal strength, and
area
lw is the total length of hoops appearing in a section.
In this way, the total amount of the transverse reinforce-
ment as well as the way of the distribution of the longitu-
dinal reinforcement bars are taken into account.
The longitudinal reinforcement amount is expressed via
the mechanical reinforcement percentage v tot
fy A fy
vtot ˆ rtot ˆ s
fc Ac fc
where r tot is the geometrical reinforcement percentage, fy
the yield stress of the longitudinal reinforcement, As the
longitudinal reinforcement area, and Ac the cross-section
area. The stress±strain law for the steel is given by the
following relationships:
s s ˆ 1 s Es ; u 1s u # u 1y u …
231
s s ˆ fy ; u1s u . u1y u …3b†
1c† Coming to the case of the conventional failure surface,
Eurocode 2 [3] speci®es the design material strengths fcd
and fyd, for concrete and steel, respectively, de®ned as
follows:
fc fy
fcd ˆ ; fyd ˆ …4†
gc gs
In Eq. (4), g c and g s are safety factors, usually having the
values 1.50 and 1.15, respectively. Thus, in Eqs. (1a), (1b),
(2) and (3b), fc and fy are replaced by their design values fcd
and fyd, respectively. The coef®cient b c takes the role of a
reduction multiplication factor of the concrete strength and
takes the value of 0.85. For this value, the Z p slope of
Eq. (1d) becomes zero and the descending part of the
1e† concrete s ± 1 law falls into the horizontal segment de®ned
by Eurocode 2 [3]. In this case the limit strain 1 cu takes the
value of 20.0035. It is clear, that Eurocode 2 neglects the
1f† increase in the concrete compressive strength due to
con®nement. The same code speci®es the value of 0.020
for the steel strain limit 1 su. These strain limits are valid
for the cases where all the sections are in tension or the
neutral axis lies inside the section. For the case where the
section is totally under compression, Eurocode 2 [3] reduces
the values of these limits by dictating the strain pro®le to
pass through a point which lies at a distance 3h=7 from the
most compressed vertex of the concrete section and has the
prede®ned strain 1 co < 20:002: The distance h, is
the concrete section height measured normally to the neutral
axis, and equals to ZC1 2 ZC2 (Fig. 6).
…2†
5. Graphic representation and computations
The main idea of the proposed method comes from the
®ber method. Thus, the proposed algorithm for constructing
the full moment±curvature diagrams starts with the de®ni-
tion of the ®ber mesh of the total cross-section, independent
of the location of the reinforcement bars and/or structural
3a† steel inside it. According to the classic ®ber method, one has
232 M.G. Sfakianakis / Advances in Engineering Software 33 (2002) 227±242
Fig. 6. Eurocode 2 strain speci®cations for cross-section in compression.
to divide the whole section into a large number of squared
(preferably) ®nite elements (the ®bers). The number
depends on the desired accuracy. The computational
disadvantage of this procedure is the large memory storage
demands, especially in cases where the perimeter of the
section is an arbitrary and sometimes nonconvex polygon.
This disadvantage, in correlation with the high computa-
tional cost, makes the nonlinear models that incorporate
the classic ®ber method not attractive for analyses of large
structures. Herein, a new graphics method is proposed
which fully eliminates the aforementioned disadvantages.
According to this method, the grid mesh may consist of
the picture-elements (pixels) of the computer monitor or
the corresponding map of them on the graphics display
card of the computer. Fig. 7(a) shows a scaled layout of
the composite section of Example 2, which will be
described later. Thus, the total section consists of a large
number of pixels. Fig. 7(b) shows a magni®ed detail of the
pixel grid.
The whole graphic procedure consists of the following
steps, which incorporate simple programming of computer
graphics:
(1) For a graphical user interface system (i.e. Microsoft
Windows), a squared window is created with a selected
resolution. For reasons that will be explained later and
seen in Section 8.2, the resolution need not be high. A
value of 300 £ 300 pixels is enough for usual sections.
Larger resolutions are required for larger cross-sections,
such as bridge box sections, etc.
(2) For a given angle u n of the neutral axis, all of the
section coordinates (including steel bars and/or structural
steel) are simply rotationaly transformed from the YGC ±
ZGC system to the Y±Z system. The latter has the Y axis
parallel to the neutral axis n±n (Fig. 3). The transformation
is performed by a simple rotation of the system YGC ±ZGC by
an angle 2u n, i.e.
" # " #" #
Y cos un 2sin qn YGC
ˆ …5†
Z sin un cos un ZGC
(3) System Y±Z is attached to the created window and its
origin is placed at the center of that window. The relation
between the lengths of axes Y, Z and the selected resolution,
de®nes the design scale. Each pixel is then considered of
having equivalent dimensions dy ˆ dz:
(4) The section is designed in the de®ned scale using
different colors for each material. Because of the rotational
transformation of step 3, the neutral axis n±n and the
corresponding Y axis will always be parallel to the
horizontal dimension of the computer's monitor. For
the next step, the whole section is considered to consist of
horizontal `ribbons' of pixels parallel to the Y axis
(Fig. 7(c)).
(5) The obtained color picture on the monitor is scanned
(optical recognition) ribbon-by-ribbon retaining for each
pixel its own color, for recognizing the kind of the material
and the physical coordinates (on the monitor's physical
coordinate system), which are directly transformed to coor-
dinates of the Y±Z system. This transformation is performed
by calling appropriate subroutines or functions of the
programming language library that is being used. Since all
pixels of a ribbon are under the same strain value, pixels of
each material of this ribbon will have the same stress.
Hence, for each ribbon, during the scanning process, the
 M.G. Sfakianakis / Advances in Engineering Software 33 (2002) 227±242 233

Fig. 7. Sample of pixel grid map of a section: (a) composite section, (b) magni®ed detail, and (c) further magni®cation.

position of the resultant force of each material is being
computed simply by taking area moments about the Z
axis. Finally, for each ribbon the y-coordinate of the resul-
tant force of each material, the common z-coordinate and
the number of pixels per material are kept in different one-
dimensional arrays, i.e.
T
‰Ym Š ˆ ‰ y1 y2 y3 ¼ yr Š ; T only once for each angle location u n of the neutral axis.
‰ZŠT ˆ ‰ z1 z2 z3 ¼ zr ŠT ;
…6†
‰Nm ŠT ˆ ‰ N1 N2 N3 ¼ Nr ŠT ;
m ˆ 1; 2; ¼; no: of materials; r ˆ no: of ribbons
In this way the overall cross-section problem is reduced to a
problem of concentrated points at speci®c locations …y; z†
and speci®ed stress, strain and area. Fig. 8 shows the posi-
tions of the resultant forces for each ribbon and material, for
the cross-section of Example 2 for un ˆ 08:
(6) Because of the squared nature of pixels, it is obvious
that further criteria need to be speci®ed in order to eliminate
any possible loss of accuracy of the area values of each
material. This loss is mainly focused on the value of the
area of the circular reinforcement bars. A simple but very
effective idea to overcome this problem is the recomputa-
tion of the equivalent pixel dimensions dy; dz since, the
exact value of the area Am of each material and the total
number of the pixels constituting this area are known
v
u A
dy ˆ dz ˆ u
u iˆr
m
…7†
uX
t N i
iˆ1
In summary, the described graphic procedure is performed
Although this graphic-computational procedure is extre-
mely fast, it can be more accelerated if the graphical result
is not displayed in the monitor. In this case, the required
computer time is only that of the graphic processor. The
resulting and very small arrays of Eq. (6) are then used
for the computation of moments about the Y and Z axes as
it is described in Section 6.
6. Computation of normal actions and curvature
As stated in Section 3, for a given value of the external
axial load N (i.e. a speci®c equator), the neutral axis is
rotated in the plane of the section in prede®ned angle
steps Du n (Fig. 3) in order to cover all possible directions
of the moment. For every current angle location of the
neutral axis, the strain 1 C2 of the most outer compressed
®ber is controlled by giving successive strain increments
in the range …0; 1cu †: Then, for every strain value 1 C2, the
neutral axis moves step-by-step normally to its direction in

Fig. 8. Position of ribbon resultant forces for: (a) concrete, (b) steel reinforcement bars, and (c) structural steel.
234 M.G. Sfakianakis / Advances in Engineering Software 33 (2002) 227±242

the cross-section plane until it ®nds a unique position for Mz;int ˆ Mz;C 1 Mz;CJ 1 Mz;s 1 Mz;st
which the sum of the internal normal stresses becomes equal Z Z
to the external given axial load N. A tolerance is speci®ed ˆ ys C …y; z†dAC 1 ys CJ …y; z†dACJ
for reaching this axial load equilibrium. When the equili- AC ACJ
brium is obtained, the moment components are computed. X
ns Z
In this way, for a speci®c value of the axial load N, one can 1 ysi asi s si 1 ys st …y; z†dAst …12†
obtain the full record of the moment values, where everything iˆ1 Ast

corresponds to a value of the strain 1 C2. After the determina- Because of the geometrical reduction of the problem, as it
tion of the depth Zc of the compressive zone and the was stated in step 5 of Section 5, the computation of the
corresponding value of 1 C2, one can ®nd the curvature value: integrals of Eqs. (10)±(12) is simpli®ed by the use of Eq. (9)
1C2 as follows:
wˆ …8†
Zc Nint ˆ NC 1 NCJ 1 Ns 1 Nst
!
2
X
iˆr X
iˆr X
iˆr X
iˆr
Thus, the full moment±curvature diagram for a speci®c value ˆ dy NCi s Ci 1 NCJi s CJi 1 Nsi s si 1 Nsti s sti
of the axial load N can be constructed. iˆ1 iˆ1 iˆ1 iˆ1
Because of the linear nature of the strain pro®le, the value …13†
of the strain at any ®ber-point …y; z† is a linear function of its My;int ˆ My;C 1 My;CJ 1 My;s 1 My;st
z-coordinate, i.e.
X
iˆr X
iˆr X
iˆr
8 z 2 zn ˆ dy2 zCi NCi s Ci 1 zCJi NCJi s CJi 1 zsi Nsi s si
>
< 1C2 zC2 2 zn
> if zn ± zC2 iˆ1
!
iˆ1 iˆ1
1…z† ˆ …9† X
iˆr
>
> z 2 zC2 1 zsti Nsti s sti (14)
: 1S1 if zn ˆ zC2
zS1 2 zC2 iˆ1

Thus, from Eq. (9) one can compute the strains of all ribbons Mz;int ˆ Mz;C 1 Mz;CJ 1 Mz;s 1 Mz;st
in the section for given values of the control parameters 1 C2 X
iˆr X
iˆr X
iˆr
or 1 S1. These strains are then replaced in Eqs. (1a), (1b), (3a) ˆ dy2 yCi NCi s Ci 1 yCJi NCJi s CJi 1 ysi Nsi s si
and (3b) in order to compute the pixel stresses of each iˆ1
!
iˆ1 iˆ1

material and for each ribbon. Computationally, for a given X

iˆr

value of 1 C2 and a speci®c location (w , Zc) of the neutral 1 ysti Nsti s sti (15)
iˆ1
axis, the equilibrium of the internal stresses with the exter-
nal load N is given by the integrals of the normal stresses of Index m of Eq. (9) takes the values C, CJ, s and st for the
each material over the total cross-section, four different materials, respectively. The ®nal step is the
computation of the moments of the desired Cartesian
Z
Nint ˆ NC 1 NCJ 1 Ns 1 Nst ˆ s C …y; z†dAC coordinate system. The expression of the moments in the
AC YGC ±ZGC system is given by the following simple rotational
…10† transformation:
Z X
ns Z
1 s CJ …y; z†dACJ 1 asi s si 1 s st …y; z†dAst " # " #" #
ACJ Ast
My cos un sin qn My
iˆ1 ˆ …16†
Mz YGC ±ZGC 2sin un cos un Mz Y±Z
Eq. (10) refers to the general case of Fig. 3, where AC is the
clear (without any reinforcements) concrete area of the The maximum permissible axial load limits are those which
initial cross-section, ACJ is the corresponding clear concrete correspond to pure tension or compression of the section. In
area of the jacket, asi is the area of each reinforcement bar these cases, the neutral axis tends to in®nity. The following
and Ast is the structural steel area in the initial cross-section. relations give these axial load limits for compression and
Stresses s C, s CJ, s si and s st are the corresponding material tension, respectively:
stresses. Similarly, the moments My and Mz about axes Y and N 2 ˆ AC fC 1 ACJ fCJ 1 As fs 1 Ast fst …17†
Z are given by:
N 1 ˆ As fs 1 Ast fst …18†
M y;int ˆ My;C 1 My;CJ 1 My;s 1 My;st
In Eqs. (17) and (18) various strengths are taken into
Z Z
ˆ zs C …y; z†dAC 1 zs CJ …y; z†dACJ account by their signs, while the areas are the clear ones
AC ACJ for each material. Because of the section unsymmetries that
have been mentioned, the application points of the forces of
X
ns Z
1 zsi asi s si 1 zs st …y; z†dAst …11† Eqs. (17) and (18) may not coincide with the origin of the
iˆ1 Ast Cartesian system in which bending moments are referred. In
 M.G. Sfakianakis / Advances in Engineering Software 33 (2002) 227±242 235

this case, secondary bending moments are produced. This In Eq. (19), Ac;tot is the total section area including any
means that the points of the axial load limits always have no reinforcement and/or openings, while hy and hz are the
zero moment components. Some exceptions to this general total section heights parallel to axes Y and Z, respectively.
rule are the orthogonal cross-section with equally distribu- It is reminded that for the case of the conventional failure
ted reinforcement along the four sides, or the circular and surface, the strength fc is replaced by its design value fcd
circular-ring sections with equally distributed reinforcement according to Eq. (4). For this case, and for a section without
along their perimeter. concrete jacket and structural steel reinforcement, the
It is worth mentioning that some numerical algorithms in normalized limit axial loads of Eqs. (17) and (18), with
the literature exhibit the problem of nonconvergence. Most the aid of Eqs. (2), (4) and (19), become
of those algorithms compute the moments about a Cartesian !
system whose origin coincides with the plastic center PC 2 fcd fyd
n ˆ 20:85 2 vtot 1 2 0:85 ; 1co # 21y ˆ 2
(Fig. 3) of the section, which is the point of application of fyd Es
the axial forces of Eqs. (17) and (18). Because of its nature, …22†
the present method can compute moments at any desired
Cartesian system. The coordinates of the plastic center of n1 ˆ vtot …23†
a section are computed by the following relations:
YC AC fC 1 YCJ ACJ fCJ 1 Ys A s fs 1 Y st Ast fst
YPC ˆ …19† 7. Computer program development
AC fC 1 ACJ fCJ 1 As fs 1 Ast fst

A computer program, named biax, which incorporates

ZC AC fC 1 ZCJ ACJ fCJ 1 Zs As fs 1 Zst Ast fst
ZPC ˆ …20† the procedure described in this paper, has been developed.
AC fC 1 ACJ fCJ 1 As fs 1 Ast fst
The program is written in Visual Fortran-90/95 [4] and can
Usually, for reasons of generality, axial load N, and bending be used for any arbitrary cross-section shape. Its speci®ca-
moments My and Mz are normalized according to the follow- tions, besides the formation of the failure surfaces and the
ing relations: design charts, include capabilities for parametric studies
based on the section moment±curvature diagrams (i.e.
N My Mz curvature ductility factors). Moreover, it can be used in
nˆ ; my ˆ ; mz ˆ
Ac;tot fc Ac;tot hz fc Ac;tot hy fc the design practice for the analytical study of a given
…21† cross-section with its reinforcements. In particular, for the

Fig. 9. s ± 1 diagrams by the biax computer program.

236 M.G. Sfakianakis / Advances in Engineering Software 33 (2002) 227±242

Fig. 10. Eurocode 2 design charts.

Fig. 11. Eurocode 2Ðdesign failure surfaces.

 M.G. Sfakianakis / Advances in Engineering Software 33 (2002) 227±242
Fig. 12. Composite concrete cross-section.
cases of jackets for repairing damaged beam or column
members, the existence of such a computational tool is
extremely useful.
By the use of this program design charts for L, T and
U-shaped sections, as well as other complicated sections
in addition to the classic orthogonal, circular, etc. sections,
are being constructed (Sfakianakis, in preparation). The
design charts include the cases were these section shapes
are reinforced columns or shear walls. These design charts
are then introduced in a database for fast design of a section.
This database has been designed in an explicit way that it
can be linked to the most popular computer packages for
analysis and design of concrete structures. As shown in
Fig. 9, the program optionally displays the complete strain
and stress diagrams during the computations, if the user so
desires. Many options are included in order to be a user
friendly program.
Fig. 13. Eurocode 2ÐIsoload contour My ±Mz and conventional failure surface.
237
8. Examples
In order to illustrate the proposed method and its accuracy
and ef®ciency, four representative examples have been
worked out and the results compared with existing ones in
the literature.
8.1. Example 1
The developed program is used for the construction of the
Eurocode 2 [3] design charts for a rectangular cross-section
with the total reinforcement amount placed equally at the two
opposite sides of the section. Fig. 10(a) shows the complete
design charts for uniaxial bending, and Fig. 10(b) shows one
quarter of the equator at n ˆ 20:20; for biaxial bending.
Fig. 11 (which has been drawn using the mathematical
software [16,22]) shows two different views of one quarter
of the conventional failure surfaces for biaxial bending
with un ˆ 0±908 at steps of 158, and for vtot ˆ 0:00=
0:50=1:00=1:50=2:00: Due to the unsymmetry in the range
un ˆ 15±758; the corresponding meridians to these angles
are not plane.
The accuracy of the results is identical to that of Euro-
code 2 [3] and for this reason the curves shown in Figs. 10
and 11 correspond to both the present results and those of
the Eurocode 2 [3].
8.2. Example 2
This is a numerical example studied by Chen et al. [2].
The composite steel±concrete cross-section of Fig. 12
consists of the concrete matrix, 15 reinforcement bars of
diameter 18 mm, a structural steel element and a circular
opening. The material properties are as follows:
Characteristic strengths for concrete, structural steel and
reinforcement bars are fc ˆ 30 MPa, fst ˆ 355 MPa and
fs ˆ 460 MPa, respectively. These characteristic strengths
are reduced by dividing them with the corresponding safety
238 M.G. Sfakianakis / Advances in Engineering Software 33 (2002) 227±242

Fig. 14. Eurocode 2ÐMeridians of conventional failure surface at Mz ˆ 0:

factors gc ˆ 1:50; gst ˆ 1:10 and gs ˆ 1:15: The section is
analyzed by the use of Eurocode 2 [3] s ± 1 laws as
described in Section 4. Fig. 13 shows the My ±Mz interaction
curve for a value of the axial load N ˆ 24120 kN and the
complete conventional failure surface.
The computations have been done using b c ˆ 0:85: For
this value of b c the present method gives the inner inter-
action curve with the dashed line. The values of Ref. [2] are
recovered by the present method for bc ˆ 1:00: The same
results are obtained by using an older classic ®ber model for
biaxial bending. The bending moments in this example are
computed about axes y±z; which pass through the plastic
center of the cross-section.
As it was stated in Section 5, some different resolution
values have been selected for this section, in order to clarify
the minimum resolution demands of the model. Fig. 14
shows meridians of the conventional failure surface at
Mz ˆ 0; un ˆ 0; 1808.
The window graph areas were of resolution 50 £ 50
(extremely small), 100 £ 100 and $ 200 £ 200 pixels (the
shaded area). It is clear that the two small resolutions
converge to the correct solution, which corresponds to

Fig. 15. Reinforced concrete cross-section with jacket.

 M.G. Sfakianakis / Advances in Engineering Software 33 (2002) 227±242 239

Fig. 16. Strain pro®les used in analysis.

values greater than 200 £ 200 pixels, with very small discre-
pancies about it. Finally, for usual sections, a minimum
resolution of 300 £ 300 pixels is recommended and may
be thought of as the golden rule for combining maximum
accuracy with minimum computing time.
8.3. Example 3
Consider the rectangular section in Fig. 15 in which a
jacket has been constructed for repairing purposes. Detailed
dimensioning is shown in Fig. 15. The minimum reinforce-
ment requirements as mentioned in Ref. [17] have been
considered. The concrete compressive strength of the initial
section is approximately fc ˆ 16 MPa and its four reinforce-
ment bars are of S220 steel grade. The corresponding
strengths for the concrete jacket are fc ˆ 25 MPa and the
reinforcement is of S400 steel grade. For this composite
section, the conventional failure surface has been deter-
mined. Moreover, a detailed study has been done, which
includes the cases of relative slip between old and new
concrete interface and the case where the assumption of
plane sections is slightly violated. Both cases are
considered on an empirical basis and the scope herein
is to see how they affect the results obtained by
omitting them.
Fig. 16 shows the assumed strain pro®les for the
considered cases. For the cases where a relative slip exists
(cases 3 and 4), it is assumed that the jacket box section and

Fig. 17. Meridians for uniaxial bending.

240 M.G. Sfakianakis / Advances in Engineering Software 33 (2002) 227±242

Fig. 18. Meridians for biaxial bending.

the initial (core) section have a common neutral axis. More-
over, the maximum strain deviations from the ®rst case
(plane section) are empirically assumed to be about 7%,
while in the second and fourth case, the deformed shape
of the strain pro®le is obtained by the use of an empirical
sinusoidal function.
The strain pro®les of Fig. 16 have been applied for the
two uniaxial bendings and a biaxial bending with un ˆ 458:
Note, that the diagonal bending of the initial section is at
49.48, and that of the composite section at 48.48. Figs. 17
and 18 show the meridians of the conventional failure
surfaces of the two sections, for the considered bending
conditions. From these graphs, it is clear that the relative
slip, which sometimes may occur at the interface of the two
concretes, can be thought of as an effect of minor impor-
tance in the ¯exural strength of reinforced concrete sections.
The opposite phenomenon occurs for the effect of nonplanar
sections. In this case, the ¯exural strength is slightly
increased in a region of the meridians which corresponds
to neutral axis inside the section. As it is expected, for the
section in this example, this small increase in the ¯exural
strength is observed mainly in the case of biaxial bending
where the moment arms of the internal forces are increased
in comparison with those of uniaxial bending.
20:0038; g ˆ 0:15; and fy ˆ 357:15 MPa. For this
example, the descending part of the concrete s ± 1 law of
Eq. (1b) is replaced by the following relation:
  
1 2 1co
s c ˆ fc 1 2 g c
1cu 2 1co
Fig. 20 shows the required interaction curve which is in
excellent agreement with that of Ref. [19] and in quite
good agreement with the experimental data of Ref. [11].
The complete failure surface of this section (Fig. 20) is
computed for neutral axis angle increments Dun ˆ 158:
Fig. 21 shows the normalized values of isoload contours
of this surface viewed from top to bottom with reference
to the equator at N ˆ n ˆ 0 (shaded area).

8.4. Exampe 4

This example concerns the L-shaped column section of

Fig. 19. For this section Hsu [11] presented experimental
and analytical studies, and later, Rodriguez and Aristizabal-
Ochoa [19] numerical solutions. The problem here is the
determination of the biaxial interaction curves, and for
un ˆ 458 using the centroidal axes. It is assumed that
fc ˆ 24:13 MPa, bc ˆ 1:00; 1co ˆ 20:002; 1cu ˆ Fig. 19. Reinforced concrete L-shaped section.
 M.G. Sfakianakis / Advances in Engineering Software 33 (2002) 227±242 241

Fig. 20. Meridian of biaxial bending and failure surface.

9. Conclusions analyze any cross-sectional shape including the case of

A new method based on the ®ber model concept and
computer graphics is proposed for the study of arbitrary
reinforced concrete cross-sectional shapes under biaxial
bending with axial load. The proposed method is in general,
fast, stable, accurate and does not include any numerical
procedures, which sometimes fail in accuracy or become
unstable, under certain circumstances. The method can
composite sections, sections with reinforced concrete jack-
ets and sections with openings. Because of these advan-
tages, it can be successfully used for both the nonlinear
analysis and the design of concrete beams and structures.
Due to the fact that the integration procedure is fully inde-
pendent of the shape of the stress distribution, and the shape
of the section of each material, one can use any other stress±
strain laws for steel and concrete. Moreover, the results of

Fig. 21. Isoload contours (equators) of the complete failure surface: (a) bottom view, (b) top view.
242 M.G. Sfakianakis / Advances in Engineering Software 33 (2002) 227±242
the method as applied to various examples were found to be
in excellent agreement with those in the literature.
Acknowledgements
The author is grateful to Professors D.E. Beskos and D.D.
Theodorakopoulos for helpful discussions and suggestions
during the course of this work.
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