Reinforced concrete (RC) beam-column joints are critical to the global behavior of framed RC structures. Insufficient reinforcing in joint areas is a primary reason for brittle failure under seismic loading. Joint-failure simulation is necessary to understand and examine the effect of both concrete and steel reinforcing on joint performance.

Modeling damage and softening typically cause numerical instabilities, convergence failure, and pathological mesh sensitivity. The simulation presented here remedies those issues by using a material that employs a nonlocal implicit gradient regularization.