Influence of Longitudinal Reinforcement Ratio on Shear Strength of RC Slender Beam Under Different Loading Rates

Abstract

. A primary current focus in concrete shear design is how to ensure the shear resistance of the concrete structures to withstand the possible adverse creep effects during the service life. All shear-carrying actions are supposed to depreciate due to the enhanced critical shear cracks under sustained loads. However, only a few studies that evaluated the performance of concrete structures failing in shear due to long-term loading. As the longitudinal tensile reinforcement strain influences the shear strength of RC beam, the shear resistance of the beam under sustained load may also be affected by the amount of longitudinal reinforcement. The present study aims at investigating the influence of flexural reinforcement ratio on the shear creep failures of reinforced concrete (RC) beams without stirrups by non-linear finite element analysis. In this study, the numerical model of RC beams with reinforcement ratios varying from 0.4% to 3.2% was evaluated under different loading rates. A loading rate of 1000 and 10000 times slower than the static loading rate were adopted to reveal the creep effects of RC beams.