Reinforcement of Concrete Structures with Mecway and Paraview
Background Unlike the FreeCAD FEM work bench, Mecway does not have the capability of estimating the level of reinforcement required in a concrete structure to prevent brittle failure under tension or shear. To overcome this limitation, I developed a Paraview script based on the method described in "Computation of reinforcement for solid concrete", P.C.J. Hoogenboom and A. de Boer, HERON Vol. 53 (2008) No. 4 . This is the same routine implemented in FreeCAD. The script calculates the principal tensile stresses in the concrete from an elastic analysis and uses those to determine the minimum reinforcement in the three coordinate directions required to prevent failure. In the analysis it is assumed that the concrete material cannot carry tensile stresses, whereas the steel is utilized to its maximum capacity (i.e. reaches yield). Further details of the methodology and its application can be found in this post Workflow The workflow to display the reinforcement ratios rhox,