A new shear-flexible FRP-reinforced concrete slab element

In this paper, a simple shear-flexible rectangular layered FRP-reinforced concrete slab element is developed based on Mindlin–Reissner plate theory and Timoshenko’s composite beam functions for nonlinear finite element analysis of FRP-reinforced concrete slabs. The Timoshenko’s composite beam functions are developed for FRP-reinforced concrete slabs based on those for composite laminates. The plane displacement interpolation functions of a quadrilateral isoparametric element with drilling degrees of freedom are employed to describe the membrane effects and the bending effects of the slab element are represented by the rotation functions of the slab element derived from Timoshenko’s composite beam functions. Both geometric nonlinearity and material nonlinearity of the materials are included in the new element. The efficiency of the element for nonlinear finite element analysis of FRP-reinforced concrete slabs is validated by comparing the computed results of two numerical examples with those obtained from lab tests.