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Concrete is still by far the most  used building material. But  the sustainability of reinforced concrete structures has to come into focus by exploiting its load carrying potential whereby expending less material. To reach the goal, computational methods such as FEM provide essential tools. In combination with experimental validation, they enable a deeper understanding of load carrying mechanisms. At the same time, a broader horizon for innovative structural designs opens up. However, sophisticated computational methods are usually provided as a “black box” and carry the risk of misinterpretation and invalid results.

This book aims to make the mechanisms of reinforced concrete transparent from the perspective of computational methods. Such methods are demonstrated for beams, plates, slabs and shells, and their opportunities and pitfalls are shown. State of the art concrete material models are presented. Concrete creep, temperature effects, prestressing, large displacements are treated as examples, most of which are performed with the ConFem software package available under open-source conditions.

Ulrich Häussler-Combe studied structural engineering at the Technical University Dortmund and gained his doctorate from the University Karlsruhe. Following ten years of construction engineering and development in computational engineering, he came back to the University Karlsruhe as a lecturer for computer aided design and structural dynamics. In 2003 he was appointed as professor for special concrete structures at the Technical University Dresden. He retired in 2021 and currently is still active as guest professor at the Technical University Munich.