Consideration of compression stress bulging and strut degradation in trussmodeling of ductile and brittle corbels

The paper presents a newly introduced modification of the strut-and-tie mod el that takes into account compression stress bulging of the strut with pro per attention to its degradation as tensile strains increase. The method is capable of discriminating between brittle and ductile modes of failure, th us eliminating the gross underestimation of capacity often observed in appl ying the truss model to brittle corbels. The proposed method provides impro ved corbel-capacity prediction in comparison to the provision of three desi gn codes. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.