Analysis of the Shear Behavior of Fiber-Reinforced Foam Concrete Beams Using Non-Linear Finite Element Method

Abstract

Structural elements such as beams most times experience shear failure suddenly without prior warning and this is different from bending failure which occurs by gradual yielding of tensile reinforcement. A previous experimental research showed that the use of lightweight foam concrete with a fiber mixture has a higher ductility in comparison to the normal concrete. It is also one of the solutions to increase the shear strength capacity of concrete and also has the ability to cause relatively small crack patterns and spread. This research, therefore, aimed to determine the shear behavior of fiber-reinforced foam concrete using a finite element with 3-dimensional modeling in an ATENA V5 software. Moreover, the results obtained were were compared with the findings of the experimental research. The test object used was a beam designed with 15 cm x 30 cm x 220 cm dimensions and the stirrup spacing for the fiber-reinforced foam concrete (BBSN-20) was 20 cm while the normal beam (BN-25) had 25 cm. The numerical analysis was observed to have shown closer values to the experimental results with the difference in the ultimate load on the BBSN-20 and BN-25 recorded to be only 7.73% and 12.6% while the ultimate deflection was 6.92% and 32.45% respectively. Meanwhile, the beam destruction patterns in both the numerical and experimental models were similar but the numerical analysis showed the two beams modeled did not experience shear failure as planned.