A Constitutive Model for Circular Steel Pipe by

Spatial Hysteretic Test

Gui-Bo Nie1*, Feng Fan2 and Xu-Dong Zhi2

1Institute of engineering mechanics, china earthquake administration, Harbin 150080, China
2School of Civil Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150090, China

(Received: 21 March 2011; Received revised form: 6 July 2011; Accepted: 28 October 2011)

Abstract: As a rapid developing structure form in late thirty years, space structures are
widely used in all kinds of large-scale public building. However, this structure form
usually appears an obvious deformation and serious material plastic under severe
earthquakes event. Under this circumstance, the material will be experienced cyclic and
accumulated damage which have an important effect on the structural behavior and
should be considered in the constitutive model. Tests of thirty circular steel tubes were
thus conducted under constant axial and cyclic horizontal loads to derive the rational
constitutive model with consideration of material damage accumulation. Further, finite-
element model were developed using ABAQUS to simulate tube behavior under load.
And then the material damage accumulation was dealt with by a user-defined
subroutine encoded with ABAQUS. The parameters in the constitutive model are
evaluated by experimental results using the least square method fitting between
experimental curve and numerical curve. The comparison between the theory and the
experiment with the interface program shows that theoretical curves are in good
agreement with experimental curves, which proves not only the constitutive equation is
accurate but also the finite element program is applicable for theoretical analysis.

Key words: circular steel tube, damage accumulation, hysteretic behavior, constitutive model, finite element.

1. INTRODUCTION began to turn their views to which form should be

In recent years, the failure mechanism and disaster
behavior of space structure under severe earthquake
have caught much attention from the world research
community. Whether or not considering material
damage accumulation will have an important effect
on the structures’ behavior since the material inside
the structure is very seriously damaged under severe
earthquake motion. Most of the early scholars focus
their attention on discussing the concepts about
material damage. The concept of “continuous degree”
was proposed by Kachanov (1986) to describe the
continuous changing process about material damage
with continuous variable in 1958; the new concept of
damage index was discussed by Rabotnov (1963);
then, a new word of damage mechanics was presented
by Janson and Hult (1977); after that, some scholars
used to express damage, up to now, damage index D
is widely accepted. Based on mentioned above, most
of the scholars study material damage in three aspects:
degeneration, deformation and synthetic acts between
the two. Then, Lai and Biggs (1980) and Kato (1987)
proposed the concept of double control composed by
deformation and energy. But the specific model
expressed by the following equation was presented by
Park and Ang (1985) and Park et al. (1985). Based on
Park’s model, Kumar and Usami (1996) and Gao et al.
(1998) investigated many experiments conducted on
hollow steel box columns and developed a damage
model to evaluate the damage accumulation. Although
the model mentioned above can not reflect the
experiment result that bigger plastic deformation
should make larger damage than smaller, this model

*Corresponding author. Email address: nieguibo0323@163.com; Fax and Tel: +86-451-86282080-802.

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 A Constitutive Model for Circular Steel Pipe by Spatial Hysteretic Test
holds an important status because that not only reflect
the contribution of maximum deformation but also the
loading history. Based on the model mentioned above,
Shen and some others (1999, 2002) present a damage
index D of I-section steel column used in high-rise
building. However, the research on material damage is
most concentrated on the concrete. Although Shen has
studied the steel material of high-rise steel structure,
the specimens used in the experiment for the model
are much less than needed and the material
constitutive model got by the experiment was based
on I-section steel column which are rarely used in
space structure. Therefore, the constitutive model
considered damage accmulation is not applicable for
circular steel tube used in space structures not only
from section form but also load characteristic. So far
there are hardly any published studies on the material
behavior of circular steel tube under three-direction
cyclic loads.
The circular steel tubes as major members of space
structures usually have an obvious deformation and
serious material plastic under severe earthquake
which belongs to strength failure. Shen (2003, 2006)
Zhi (2008) have completed fundamental research on
the contribution of damage accumulation to the
response of structure under severe earthquake. The
result indicates that the accumulative material
hysteretic damage has an important impact on the
failure characteristic and failure load of the structure.
Thus, to obtain the structure’s accurate response
subject to earthquake must be at the basic of more
accurate material constitutive model, which needs a
special experimental research on spatial structure
members.
In this paper, six series of circular steel tubes with
five load schemes in each series were carried out. A
“user material subroutine” was exploited for finite
element program ABAQUS (2000) to complete
numerical simulation of the experiment. Further, a
generalized constitutive model of circular steel tubes
considering damage accumulation was developed using
the least squares method. Comparison between
numerical simulation and experimental results shows
close agreement between the two, which proves not only
the constitutive model is accurate but also the finite
element model is applicable to numerical analysis.
Finally, using the constitutive model, responses of
reticulated shell under severe earthquakes were
investigated and the characteristic responses at
structural failure have been discussed. Using the method
presented in this paper, the effect of the damage
accumulation on the performance of the space structures
can be accurately quantified.
1280
2. OUTLINE OF EXPERIMENTS
2.1. Experiment Setup and the Specimens
Circular steel tubes with a height of 900 mm, 1200 mm
and 1500 mm and a cross-section of Φ 76 × 5 mm,
Φ 114 × 5 mm and Φ 140 × 5 mm, respectively, were
chosen to cover different slenderness ratios applicable
in engineering practice. All the specimens as shown in
Table 1 were tested as cantilevered tubes.
The plates were welded to the cantilever tip to
guarantee the specimen could rotate some angles in
horizontal and vertical direction, as shown in Figure 1(a).
To reinforce the stiffness and stability of the load setup,
the bottom plate of the specimen was connected with the
steel box by high strength bolts.
Since the top of the cantilever tip moving in two
horizontal directions, the connection joined with a
hinge to ensure some deflection angles in two
directions. The horizontal reaction frame was
specially designed to avoid the lack of stiffness in
horizontal direction. The ear-plates were welded in
different height of the reaction frame to meet the
height alteration of the specimens. The steel beam
linking the steel box and the reaction frame formed a
self-balancing system, as shown in Figures 1(b) and
1(c). A LVDT and a load cell were applied to the top
of specimen along the two mutually perpendicular
directions, respectively, as shown in Figure 1(c). It is
a vital that the specimen is applied with an axial load
at the top while the top end is kept free. The load setup
was designed as follows to achieve this. A steel rod
with a diameter of 45 mm that can withstand both
tension and compression went through the hollow
tube. Then a steel ball was added to the rod via threads
to stop the movement of the rod once the rod is in
tension. An upward load was applied to the fixed plate
by the jack. The fixed plate was connected to the rod
also via threads. Thus the specimen was in
compression due to the reaction of the jack, while the
rod is in tension.
2.2. Load Schemes
Five load schemes were selected for the experiment,
as shown in Figure 2. All load schemes are constant
axial load with the amplitude about sixty percent of its
tensile strength of the cross-section. Load scheme 1
simulates earthquake action with the identical period
and identical phase in two horizontal directions by
keeping the horizontal thrust identical; load scheme 2
applies constant force in the horizontal direction of x
and cyclic reverse load in the direction of y, then
increase the horizontal force of x; keep this process
until the specimen broken; load scheme 3 applies
constant load in the horizontal direction of x and then
Advances in Structural Engineering Vol. 15 No. 8 2012
Feng Fan, Gui-Bo Nie and Xu-Dong Zhi

Table 1. Specimens numbering plan

Corresponding description Corresponding description

of
___________________the specimen
_______________________________ of
___________________the specimen
_______________________________
Section Section
Length diameter Load Length diameter Load
Specimen (mm) (mm) λ schemes Specimen (mm) (mm) λ schemes
1-1-1 900 140 38 1 1-3-4 900 76 72 4
1-1-2 2 1-3-5 5
1-1-3 3 2-1-1 1200 140 50 1
1-1-4 4 2-1-2 2
1-1-5 5 2-1-3 3
1-2-2 900 114 47 2 2-1-4 4
1-2-3 3 2-1-5 5
1-2-4 4 3-1-1 1500 140 63 1
1-2-5 5 3-1-2 2
1-3-1 900 76 72 1 3-1-3 3
1-3-2 2 3-1-4 4
1-3-3 3 3-1-5 5

Reaction frame
Jacking apparatus

LVDT

Load cell

Specimen Connected
beam

(a) Specimen (b) Specimen and loading device (c) Load setup

Figure 1. Specimen and loading device

y y y y y

X X X X X

Load scheme 1 Load scheme 2 Load scheme 3 Load scheme 4 Load scheme 5

Figure 2. Load schemes

the horizontal load in y direction is increased or 3. HYSTERETIC EXPERIMENT AND DATA

decreased alternatively until the specimen fails; load
scheme 4 simulates earthquake action in two
horizontal directions with the same period but
different phase; load scheme 5 simulates earthquake
action in two horizontal directions with the different
period and phase.
PROCESSING
3.1. Verification of the Setup Stabilization
Two series of specimens with the same load scheme
were selected to verify the stability of the experiment
setup and data acquisition system. Each group included
three specimens, one group selecting load scheme 1 and

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 A Constitutive Model for Circular Steel Pipe by Spatial Hysteretic Test

the other selecting load scheme 2. The details of the
specimens are shown in Table 2.
Compare the hysteretic curves with the same load
scheme by putting them in one figure, as shown in
Figure 3. Remove the part with excessive deformation
in the curves to get a better observation of the curves.
The maximum distinctness in Figure 3(a) in peak value
in this three curves is 6.6% and 2.6% in Figure 3(b).
Which indicate the error caused by setup is acceptable.
The results show that hysteretic curves are in good
agreement with each other which proves not only the
experiment setup is accurate but also the experiment
results are creditable.
3.2. Experiment Observations
Take the specimen 3-1-3 as an example, the hysteretic
load-displacement curves got from experiment in
different load steps is shown in Figure 4. The abscissa
stands for the displacement of the cantilevered top end
of specimen and the ordinate stands for the horizon load
applied to the top end. Figure 4(a) shows that the
coverage area of the hysteretic curve is almost zero
when the specimen is loaded under cyclic horizontal
displacement within the elastic range (the loading
displacement ranges from −4 mm to 4 mm). The energy
consumption is approximately to zero because the
deformation energy is elastic strain energy. The residual
deformation still exist when the load decrease to zero
during the procedure of cyclic load. The hysteretic
behavior of the specimen keeps well before the maximal
bearing capacity and reduces slowly (the load
displacement less than 60 mm) which indicates the
specimen has a good load-carrying capacity; the bearing
capacity of the specimen drops faster after the load
displacement over 80 mm which indicates the material
damage of the specimen becomes seriously under
excessively large deformation. The peak value of curve
presents a constant growing state till the specimen
buckling which shows damage is little before buckling.
But after the specimen reaching buckling, the peak
value curve presents a constant descending which shows
the material damage accumulation increases obviously.
This paper only gives one group of curves with the five
load schemes, as shown in Figure 5. Results of Figure 5
show that the hysteretic process has no impact on the
destructive model since all the destructive models of the
specimens are the same. The destructive model in all
specimens is the large plastic deformation in the end of
the specimen due to the boundary condition in the
experiment.

Table 2. Specimens numbering plan

Outer Outer
Length diameter Thickness Load Length diameter Thickness Load
Specimen (mm) (mm) (mm) schemes Specimen (mm) (mm) (mm) schemes
1-2-1-1 900 114 5 1 1-3-2-1 900 76 5 2
1-2-1-2 1 1-3-2-2 2
1-2-1-3 1 1-3-2-3 2

20 10
1–2–1–1 1–3–2–1
8
15 1–2–1–2 1–3–2–2
1–2–1–3 6 1–3–2–3
10
4
5
X force (KN)

Y force (KN)

2
0 0

−5 −2

−4
−10
−6
−15
−8
−20 −10
−30 −20 −10 0 10 20 30 −40 −30 −20 −10 0 10 20 30 40
X displacement (mm) Y displacement (mm)

Figure 3. Contrast hysteretic curves

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Feng Fan, Gui-Bo Nie and Xu-Dong Zhi

10
Experimental 15 Experimental 15 Experimental
5 10 10
Y force (KN)

Y force (KN)

Y force (KN)
5 5
0
0 0
−5 −5 −5
−10 −10
−10
−15 −15
−15 −20 −20
−30 −20 −10 0 10 20 −80 −60 −40 −20 0 20 40 60 −80 −60 −40 −20 0 20 40 60 80
Y displacement (mm) Y displacement (mm) Y displacement (mm)

(a) Observations during experimental (b) Observations during experimental (c) Observations during experimental
process process process

Figure 4. Test observations of 3-1-3 during experimental process

15 20
3–1–1 3–1–2 15 3–1–3
10 15
10
10
Y force (KN)

Y force (KN)

Y force (KN)

5 5
5
0 0 0
−5 −5
−5
−10 −10
−10 −15 −15
−15 −20 −20
−40 −20 0 20 40 60 −100 −75 −50−25 0 25 50 75 100 −80 −60 −40−20 0 20 40 60 80
Y displacement (mm) Y displacement (mm) Y displacement (mm)

20 15
15 3–1–4 3–1–5
10
10
Y force (KN)

Y force (KN)

5 5
0
−5 0
−10 −5
−15
−20 −10
−80−60−40−20 0 20 40 60 80 −40 −20 0 20 40
Y displacement (mm) Y displacement (mm)

Figure 5. Hysteretic curves and failure of specimens 3-1-1 to 3-1-5

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 A Constitutive Model for Circular Steel Pipe by Spatial Hysteretic Test

3.3. Analysis of Experimental Results 0.8

It’s very important to eliminate the experiment errors Displacement
0.6

Displacement of 1 (mm)
since the experiment results will be inevitably affected
by the accuracy of the experiment setup and some other
0.4
external factors. In this section, the analysis and
correction of experimental results will be conducted. 0.2
Take specimen 3-1-3 as an example, this experiment
error has the following three parts: 0.0
(1) The accuracy of experiment result will be
−0.2
susceptible to the rigid body rotation of the
steel box at the bottom of specimen as shown 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45
in Figure 6. The vertical displacement of the Load step (n)
four deflectometers as shown in Figure 6(a) (a) Displacement curve of 1
are recorded during experiment process (the
0.6
displacement curves changing with load were
Displacement
shown in Figure 7(a), as space is limited, only

Displacement of 2 (mm)
the curves of 1 and 2 measuring point are 0.4

given). Take Y direction as an example, the

centre displacement between 1 and 4 is got 0.2
from the average displacement of them,
equally, such displacement between 2 and 3 is 0.0
got (the relation between them are shown in
Figure 6(a). In what follows, the top −0.2
displacement of the specimen formed by the
rotation of the steel box could be revised by 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45
Load step (n)
the linear relationship shown in Figure 6(b).
The contrast curves composed by revised (b) Displacement curve of 2

curve and unrevised curve is shown in Figure
8 which indicates the maximum displacement
error caused by the rigid body rotation of the
steel box can be up to 10%.
(2) As shown in Figure 9(a), the force sensor at the
loading position and the LVDT at the top plate
are not in the same height. So, the top
displacement is adjusted to force position at the
basic of eliminating the rigid body rotation. The
contrast curves composed by revised curve and
Figure 7. Displacement curves of 1 and 2
unrevised curve is shown in Figure 9(b) which
indicates the maximum displacement error
caused by this factor could be 18%.
(3) A disadvantageous effect in three-dimension
loading experiment is the geometric
nonlinearity produced by the cyclic horizontal
load from two directions, as shown in
Figure 10(a). The following equation is given
by the geometrical relationship shown in
Figure 10(b).

y x
sin α x = ,sin α y =
lx ly
4
2 2 (1)
 y  x
1 3 cos α x = 1 −   ,cos α y = 1 −  
 lx   ly 
2
y
x

The following are the actual force of specimen given

(a) Schematic drawing of overhead (b) Schematic drawing of in X and Y directions.
view of steel box steel box's rotation

Figure 6. Verified schematic drawing of steel box’s rotation X direction: Qx = Fx cos α x + Fy sin α y (2)

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Feng Fan, Gui-Bo Nie and Xu-Dong Zhi

20 20
Unrevised curve Unrevised curve
15 Revised curve 15 Revised curve
X force (KN) 10 10

Y force (KN)
5 5
0 0
−5 −5
−10
−10
−15
−15
−20
−20
−80 −60 −40 −20 0 20 40 60 80 −80 −60 −40 −20 0 20 40 60 80
X displacement (mm) Y displacement (mm)
(a) Contrast curve of X (b) Contrast curve of Y

Figure 8. Contrast curves of X and Y

X displacement

X force

(a) Schematic drawing of top of specimen

Unrevised curve Unrevised curve

15 Revised curve 15 Revised curve
10 10
X force (KN)

Y force (KN)

5 5
0 0
−5 −5
−10
−10
−15
−15
−20
−20
−80 −60 −40 −20 0 20 40 60 80 −80 −60 −40 −20 0 20 40 60 80
X displacement (mm) Y displacement (mm)

(b) Contrast curves of X and Y

Figure 9. Schematic drawing of top of specimen and contrast curves of X and Y of specimen 3-1-3

Y direction: Qy = Fx sin α x + Fy cos α y
where Fx and Fy are measuring values of the force
sensor which were connected to the jacks, when the
specimen was pushed to the maximum displacement,
(3) the corresponding cosαx = 0.997, sinαx = 0.07,
cosαy = 0.998, sinαy = 0.06, so the sine term could be
ignored and the cosine term was supposed to 1 which
indicated the actual force could be regarded equal to the
measuring value of the force sensor.

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 A Constitutive Model for Circular Steel Pipe by Spatial Hysteretic Test

y
5

1y
4
αy

1x Fx
2
y
4 3 1 X
6 αx
2
5
6
X
Fx

(a) Schematic drawing of specimen (b) Geometrical relationship of horizontal direction

Figure 10. Interaction of the two horizontal directions

4. ESTABLISHMENT OF CONSTITUTIVE
MODEL
4.1. Constitutive Equations for Material
The material damage includes plastic developing,
initiation and development of tiny cracks. Due to these
micro damage’s forming and developing, the performance
of the structure will be more deteriorative than its initial
state. Under these circumstances the material will be
considered in a damage state. The material damage degree
is generally expressed by damage index D (Kumar and
Usami 1996; Gao et al. 1998). The characteristics of D
could be defined as follows:
(1) The value of D changes between 0 and 1. D = 0
means no damage and D = 1 means complete
failure of the material.
(2) Damage index D should be a monotone
increasing function which indicates that the
development of damage is non-reversible.
Up to the present, the expression of the degree of
damage for the ductile metal material is accepted as
follows:
N p
ε mp εi
D = (1 − β )
εu
+ β ∑
i =1 ε u
p p
p
where ε m is the maximum plastic strain of steel under
p
load; ε i is the plastic strain of steel at the half cycle of
p
the ith number; ε u is the limit plastic strain of steel at the
time of monotonic loading; β is the weight coefficient
defined for the experiment; N is the number of half
cycles under cyclic load.
At the same time, the material young’s modulus and
yield strength corresponding to damage index D is
shown as follows:
E D = (1 − ξ1 D ) E (5)
σ D = (1 − ξ2 D )σ S (6)
where E and E D are the young’s modulus,
respectively to no damage and damage; σs and σD are
the yield strength, in accordance with no damage and
damage; ξ1 and ξ2 are parameters determined by the
experiment. Eqns 4 to 6 forms a group of equations to
describe the constitutive relation considering material
damage accumulation. The mechanical behavior of
the material can be described accurately by this group
of equations. The aim of this paper is getting these
unknown parameters of the equations, that are ξ1,
ξ2 and β.
4.2. Evaluate Parameters in the Constitutive
Equations
Although the finite element program ABAQUS has
(4) provided abundant material constitutive models for
user, it can’t completely satisfy all the requirements of
users. Therefore, the program allows each user to
define the material constitutive model by UMAT
provided by ABAQUS (ABAQUS 2000a) to some
special questions. This paper exploits corresponding
interface subroutine based this function to consider the
effect of material damage accumulation to carry out
numerical analysis for the experiment and reticulated

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Feng Fan, Gui-Bo Nie and Xu-Dong Zhi

10 of parameters β = 0.0232, ξ1 = 0.39, ξ2 = 0.058. The

8 Numerical
Experimental constitutive model is described as the following:
6
N p
4 ε mp εi
D = (0.9768) + ∑
Y force (KN)

2 0 . 0232
0
−2
−4
−6
−8
−10
−50 −40 −30 −20 −10 0 10 20 30 40 50
Y displacement (mm)
Hysteretic cure of specimen when β = 0.019, ξ1 = 0.331, ξ 2 = 0.059
Figure 11. Curves established using trial and error method
shell. Actually, the UMAT is a Fortran subroutine
compiled by ABAQUS before calculation. The Eqns 4
to 6 are used as material constitutive model in this
subroutine. The core of the subroutine is to update the
stresses, strains, and material properties for subsequent
load increments. Inputting any given displacement
obtained in the test, the program incorporated with the
UMAT will output corresponding load of specimen.
Just take the specimen 1-3-3-1 as an example, revise
each parameter from Eqns 4 to 6 by data fitting between
numerical simulation and experiment results. The value
of ξ1, ξ2 and β is so determined when the two curves
match best at apex points of the hysteretic curves. As
shown in Figure 11, numerical simulation curve
matches experiment curve best when β = 0.019, ξ1 =
0.331, ξ2 = 0.059.
By this principle, the parameters in constitutive
model of the other specimens are listed in Table 3.
Because the three parameters are not completely
identical, a normalized constitutive equation of circular
steel pipes considering damage accumulation was
developed with least squares fitting method. The value
(7)
εu p
i =1 ε u
p
E D = (1 − 0.39 D ) E (8)
σ D = (1 − 0.058 D )σ S (9)
4.3. Verification of the Accuracy of the
Constitutive Model
In this section, to verify the accuracy of the normalized
constitutive model, all the specimens are recomputed
with the model again. Take the specimen 3-1-3 and 3-1-
4 as an example, compare the hysteretic load-
displacement curve between experimental curve and
numerical curve by the finite element ABAQUS
encoded by the UMAT, as shown in Figure 12. The
results indicate that numerical curves are in good
agreement with experimental curves. That proves not
only the constitutive model of circular steel pipe
considering damage accumulation is accurate but also
the UMAT exploited for the finite element ABAQUS is
applicable for numerical analysis.
4.4. Verification of Component Level
Every constitutive model has its advantage and
disadvantage, only applicable to some phenomenon. No
one can fully describe the complex action of the real
material and apply to all situations, so in practical situation
we just focus on the necessary factors and ignore some
unimportant factors. Because steel’s well-known ductility,
the ductile damage only corresponding to the large
deformation and plastic strain which indicates the effect is
negligible in normal calculation in steel structure and only

Table 3. Variable value of damage index D of each circular steel pipe

Specimen β ξ1 ξ2 Specimen β ξ1 ξ2 Specimen β ξ1 ξ2

1-1-1 0.017 0.401 0.061 1-2-3 0.034 0.432 0.05 2-1-1 0.015 0.321 0.061
1-1-2 0.019 0.404 0.062 1-2-4 0.017 0.398 0.062 2-1-2 0.033 0.421 0.063
1-1-3 0.022 0.411 0.06 1-2-5 0.016 0.401 0.061 2-1-3 0.034 0.421 0.063
1-1-4 0.032 0.441 0.063 1-3-1 0.027 0.381 0.058 2-1-4 0.026 0.421 0.063
1-1-5 0.017 0.401 0.061 1-3-2-1 0.021 0.341 0.061 2-1-5 0.015 0.401 0.061
1-2-1-1 0.034 0.441 0.039 1-3-2-2 0.018 0.321 0.058 3-1-1 0.023 0.422 0.062
1-2-1-2 0.034 0.436 0.04 1-3-2-3 0.019 0.331 0.059 3-1-2 0.015 0.411 0.063
1-2-1-3 0.034 0.436 0.04 1-3-3 0.028 0.382 0.057 3-1-3 0.028 0.421 0.063
1-2-1 0.034 0.411 0.044 1-3-4 0.017 0.321 0.057 3-1-4 0.022 0.421 0.063
1-2-2 0.014 0.303 0.067 1-3-5 0.016 0.33 0.058 3-1-5 0.014 0.324 0.059

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20 20
Numerical Numerical
10 Experimental Experimental
10
5
5
X force (KN)

Y force (KN)
0
0
−5
−5
−10

−15 −10

−20 −15
−50 −40 −30 −20 −10 0 10 20 30 40 50 −50 −40 −30 −20 −10 0 10 20 30 40 50
X displacement (mm) Y displacement (mm)
(a) Contrast curves of 3-1-3 (b) Contrast curves of 3-1-3

20
Numerical curve
Unrevised 20 Numerical curve
Unrevised
15 Experimental
Revised curve Experimental
Revised curve
15
10 10
X force (KN)

Y force (KN)
5 5
0 0

−5 −5
−10
−10
−15
−15
−20
−20
−80 −60 −40 −20 0 20 40 60 −80 −60 −40 −20 0 20 40 60
X displacement (mm) Y displacement (mm)
(c) Contrast curves of 3-1-4 (d) Contrast curves of 3-1-4

Figure 12. Contrast curves between numerical calculation and experiment

obvious in the severe plastic development of the structure after the material reach plasticity, the
or component. In view of this, the study of the damage aforementioned model will be no longer suitable
accumulation of steel can not separate with the structure’s since the two contrast curves differ so dramatic, as
or component’s failure mechanism. Around the failure, the shown in Figure 13.
structure usually undergo an obvious deformation and (2) From Figure 14 it can be concluded that the
deep material plastic under severe earthquake motion, numerical simulation curve match the
which not only presents notable intensity destruction experiment curve better after considering the
characteristic but also indicates considerable material damage accumulation. With the increasing of
hysteretic accumulative damage in the component and the plastic, the difference between the curves
structure. That effect has obvious effect to failure considering damage or not will be more and
characteristic and failure limit of the structure. So, more obvious, and the curve considering
obtaining the structure’s precise response under damage accumulation will be 18% lower than
earthquake should be at the basic of more accurate the curve with no consideration of that factor
material constitutive model. at the maximum displacement (Figure 14).
In this section, this paper complete the numerical Usually, during an earthquake, a structure
simulation for the experiment with two constitutive undergo a large plastic deformation and in the
models that are perfect elastic-plastic model and subsequent cycles vibrates partly or entirely on
isotropic hardening model considering damage the former position which make the damage
accumulation, the results are shown in Figures 13 and 14. accumulation even more serious, so the
(1) Within the range of elasticity, the numerical damage accumulation should be considered
simulation curve with perfect elastic-plastic model when the structure subjected to earthquake
is in good agreement with experiment curve, but motion.

1288 Advances in Structural Engineering Vol. 15 No. 8 2012

Feng Fan, Gui-Bo Nie and Xu-Dong Zhi

20
20
Numerical Numerical
Experimental 15 Experimental
15
X force (KN)
10 10

Y force (KN)
5 5
0 0
−5 −5
−10 −10
−15
−15
−20
−20
−60 −40 −20 0 20 40 60 −60 −40 −20 0 20 40 60
X displacement (mm) Y displacement (mm)
(a) Contrast curves of 3-1-4 (b) Contrast curves of 3-1-4

Figure 13. Contrast curves of specimen 3-1-4

30
Considering damage 20 Consider damage
20 Experimental Experimental
10
10
X force (KN)

Y force (KN)
0
0

−10
−10

−20 −20

−30 −30
−80 −60 −40 −20 0 20 40 60 80 −60 −40 −20 0 20 40 60
X displacement (mm) Y displacement (mm)
(a) Contrast curves of 3-1-4 (b) Contrast curves of 3-1-4

Figure 14. Contrast curves of specimen 3-1-4

5. CONCLUSIONS proves not only the constitutive model is

Through the study on the experiment of circular steel
pipes under cyclic loading and responses of reticulated
shell under severe earthquake, following conclusions
can be summed up.
(1) The experiment setup applicable for three-
dimension load was designed to cover different
slenderness ratios and different load schemes.
The experimental result indicates not only the
experiment setup is stable but also data
acquisition system is creditable.
(2) The UMAT encoded with finite element program
ABAQUS to consider the effect of damage
accumulation is exploited. Then the normalized
constitutive model of circular steel pipes
considering damage accumulation was developed
by fitting method between experimental results
and numerical simulation results.
(3) The curves of numerical simulation are in good
agreement with experiment curves, which
accurate but also the finite element program
with the UMAT is applicable for dynamic
whole-course analysis of single-layer reticulated
shells under earthquake motion.
(4) After the material beyond plasticity, the
perfect elastic-plastic model will be no longer
suitable for the experiment. With the
increasing of the plastic, the difference
between the curves considering damage or not
will be more and more obvious, and the curve
considering damage accumulation will be
18% lower than the curve with no
consideration of that factor at the maximum
displacement.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This project is funded by national natural science
foundation of China (90715034).

Advances in Structural Engineering Vol. 15 No. 8 2012 1289

 A Constitutive Model for Circular Steel Pipe by Spatial Hysteretic Test

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