NUMERICAL MODELING VALIDATION OF REINFORCED CONCRETE SLABS UNDER HIGH-MASS LOW-VELOCITY IMPACT USING ANSYS WORKBENCH EXPLICIT DYNAMICS SYSTEM

An investigation into the reinforced concrete slab behavior under impact with different parameters including slab thickness, longitudinal reinforcement ratio, and transverse reinforcement ratio has been conducted and presented in this study. The main focus of the work is to study the local and global response of reinforced concrete slabs under high-mass, low-velocity impacts dynamic loading. ANSYS Workbench V.17.0 commercial software has been used in the numerical modeling and simulation of the dynamic problem using the Explicit Dynamics System. The constitutive modeling adopted the RHT Concrete Damage Model for the concrete material and the Cowper-Symonds Strength for the steel reinforcement bars. The steel impactor, the loading plate, and the steel supports were modeled as rigid bodies during the simulation. The analyses results were compared with that of the experimental tests conducted by another researcher [1] which have been described in detail. The validity of the proposed numerical model has been demonstrated by conducting a comparison of the analysis results with the experimental tests where it has been concluded that the presented numerical model is capable of predicting the peak value of the impact force-time history, peak displacement-time history, and showed an acceptable crack pattern and damage criteria similar to that of the tests. Based upon this investigation findings, a conclusion is made that the ANSYS Workbench Explicit Dynamics and the RHT Concrete Damage model afford powerful and reliable results to simulate the impact problem of high-mass low-velocity falling weights on reinforced concrete slabs, in spite of its simple input and few parameters relative requirements