SUMMARYThe purpose of this paper is to describe how the methods and concepts of continuum damage and fracture mechanics can be applied to the modelling of the hysteretic behaviour of Reinforced Concrete (RC) frame members under variable axial loads. A frame member is considered as the assemblage of an elastic beam-column and two inelastic hinges, as in conventional nonlinear analysis of RC frames. As a result of the combination of damage mechanics and standard RC theory, a simplified model of damage is proposed and implemented as a finite element (FE). This new element can be used with any non-linear commercial FE program. The numerical simulation of several experiments, for which data were available in the literature, verifies the accuracy of the model.

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