Fiber-reinforced concrete has a distinctive post-cracking behavior. Flexural tensile tests enable
the opportunity to determine the plastic tensile behavior but just in an indirect way via inverse
analyses. The measured force-crack mouth opening displacement (CMOD) relationship
has to be translated into a stress-crack mouth opening displacement relationship. The stress-
CMOD relationship can be extracted by using plastic material models in a numerical approach
and validated by comparing numerical with experimental results. Due to the inverse problem,
the comparison follows the principle of “trial and error”. In order to automate the process of
inverse analysis and approximate the identification problem, a heuristic has been developed
using swarm optimization. Subject of the optimization is a B-Spline-curve, which represents
the non-linear tensile behavior in a parametric mathematical way. Meanwhile, numerical dependencies
are considered by including the numerical simulation in the optimization process.
Possible sensitivities are investigated exemplarily. A numerical calculation of a shear beam
will conclude the paper and illustrate the application of the heuristic.
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