DAMAGE AND PLASTICITY CONSTANTS OF CONVENTIONAL AND HIGH-STRENGTH CONCRETE PART I: STATISTICAL OPTIMIZATION USING GENETIC ALGORITHM

The constitutive relationships presented for concrete modeling are often associated with unknown material constants. These constants are in fact the connectors of mathematical models to experimental results. Experimental determination of these constants is always associated with some difficulties. Their values are usually determined through trial and error procedure, with regard to experimental results. In this study, in order to determine the material constants of an elastic-damage-plastic model proposed for concrete, the results of 44 uniaxial compression and tension experiments collected from literature were used. These constants were determined by investigating the consistency of experimental and modeling results using a genetic algorithm optimization tool for all the samples; then, the precision of resulted constants were investigated by simulating cyclic and biaxial loading experiments. The simulation results were compared to those of the corresponding experimental data. The results observed in comparisons indicated the accuracy of obtained material constants in concrete modeling.