Parallel Materials

[Joseph]

Dear Silvia,

I'd like to study the influence of one of the constituents’ materials in an element. What comes to mind is to keep on varying the quantity of the material whose effect is to be studied in the element.

Assuming the element is modeled as containing parallel materials. How can I specify the quantity/area of each material that made up the the element?

Would you advice I opt for the fiber element? I hope not. I have no idea of the relative position of the materials to one another, but I am too sure they interact together to behave in a particular way.

This is what I mean: Some studies have established the effect of infill wall can be represented by a diagonal -no tension element. Other works established that the behavior of the in-filled frame improves with the addition of horizontal reinforcements at some of bed joints of the infil wall. The wall then resists both compression and tension forces.

I want to assume that the diagonal element is now made up of both the brick and reinforcing bars both of which are in parallel. The question therefore arises as to how I can specify the quantity of reinforcement contained in the element as I would like to study how the frame behaves under varying quantities of reinforcing bars. The diagonal element is ‘fictitious’ which makes it impossible to state the relative position of the constituents’ materials

Thank you for your attention.

Joseph Olusola IDOWU

[silvia]

i don't know enough about it to make a judgement.
anyone else have any ideas?