Shear Behavior of RC Beams with Full or Partial SFRC Shear Span

Abstract

This study presents experimental and theoretical investigation performed to investigate the shear behavior of reinforced concrete beams without shear reinforcement (stirrups) and with full or partial steel fiber reinforced concrete (SFRC) shear span.More rational way has been used by replacing (strengthening) a certain part(s) of shear span by steel fiber reinforced concrete (SFRC). Tests were carried out on four beams, simply supported under single point loading. One of which were made fully with NSC, and the others were made fully or partially with SFRC in shear spans.Experimental results show that the ultimate shear strengths are increased by (17% -150 %), while the reserve shear strength is increased by (18.2 % - 48.8 %) for tested beams strengthened with SFRC, in comparison with the reference beam. Crack arrest mechanism of steel fibers limits crack propagation, improves reserve strength and alters the mode of failure. So, more safety was obtained.ANSYS finite Element package program are used to simulate all tested beams. Three dimensional nonlinear brick element (solid element) was utilized to model the concrete, while, the steel reinforcement was modeled by using a discrete representation (bar element).It was found that the general behavior of the finite element models shows good agreement with the experimental tests results.