Geometric Nonlinear Analysis of RC Frame structure using Applied Element Method (AEM)

Reinforced Concrete (RC) structural elements having vast varieties of applications. Understanding the failure mechanism, deflection capacity beyond elastic limit is very important from the structural engineering point of view. Various RC structures are slender in nature which produces large deformations due to geometric nonlinearity. Nonlinear analysis of RC structures is very complex in nature and hence there is need of highly efficient numerical method. Applied Element Method (AEM) is a displacement-based method which can track highly nonlinear behavior of the structure i.e. crack initiation and propagation, element separation, rigid body motion of structural elements and total collapse process with the high accuracy. In this study, the aim of the geometrical nonlinear analysis is to predict the deflection of the RC structure at various loading interval. In this paper the results obtained using AEM are compared with the Finite Element Method (FEM) based results obtained using the ABAQUS software. It is observed that there is a close agreement between the results obtained using AEM and FEM which shows that, AEM can be used for the geometric nonlinear analysis of the structures effectively.