Keywords: reinforced concrete, bending, computational analysis, non linear analysis, beams.

In recent years, the service performance of reinforced concrete (RC) structures has been growing in importance when compared to the ultimate limit states. Many studies and an improvement of the characteristics of concrete and steel have increased the knowledge of the behaviour of reinforced concrete beams. The need for greater spans in new buildings leads to increasingly slim and flexible structures, with high levels of internal forces and with increasing difficulties in maintaining the deformations within a certain limit.

Therefore, the evaluation of the performance of RC structures assumes an important role not only with regard the prediction of the strength, but mainly in the prediction of the deformations, cracking, or the stresses in the materials. Normally, for simplification, it is assumed that elastic behaviour can be adopted. Many times, when compared to the actual behaviour, the deviations associated with this assumption are not negligible.

In this paper, the authors present a new development of a numerical programme to evaluate the nonlinear behaviour of RC structures subjected to bending. Usually, load-displacement curves are used to visualize this behaviour. In this case, the curves obtained from the computational programme are compared with the experimental plots obtained from laboratorial tests. When comparing the curves from both sources, the points are very closed to each other, not only for high levels of loading, but also for the whole development of the curves, including for load levels near the cracking point.

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