TY - JFULL AU - Ali Khajeh Samani and Mario M. Attard PY - 2011/12/ TI - Lateral Behavior of Concrete T2 - International Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering SP - 532 EP - 538 VL - 5 SN - 1307-6892 UR - https://publications.waset.org/pdf/13833 PU - World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology NX - Open Science Index 59, 2011 N2 - Lateral expansion is a factor defining the level of confinement in reinforced concrete columns. Therefore, predicting the lateral strain relationship with axial strain becomes an important issue. Measuring lateral strains in experiments is difficult and only few report experimental lateral strains. Among the existing analytical formulations, two recent models are compared with available test results in this paper with shortcomings highlighted. A new analytical model is proposed here for lateral strain axial strain relationship and is based on the supposition that the concrete behaves linear elastic in the early stages of loading and then nonlinear hardening up to the peak stress and then volumetric expansion. The proposal for the lateral strain axial strain relationship after the peak stress is mainly based on the hypothesis that the plastic lateral strain varies linearly with the plastic axial strain and it is shown that this is related to the lateral confinement level. ER -