Experimental study on the shear strength of reinforced concrete beams cast with Lava lightweight aggregates

Abstract

This paper investigates experimentally the shear strength behavior of reinforced concrete (RC) beams cast with Lava lightweight aggregates as a replacement of normal coarse aggregates. A total of 24 shear deficient RC beams were fabricated and cast with normal (NWC) and lightweight (LWC) concrete and tested under three-point bending after 28 and 56 days. The variables of the experimental program include type of aggregate, concrete compressive strength, and beam size. The experimental results include load–deflection response curves along with failure mode for each beam specimen. The experimental result showed that all beams failed in a similar fashion, due to diagonal tension shear crack. However, a larger number of cracks with less spacing occurred in the LWC beams as compared to NWC specimens. Based on the experimental results, it can be also concluded that LWC specimens tested after 56 days achieved comparable shear strength results to that of NWC beams. In addition, the strength reduction factor (λ) for LWC specimens was in the range of 0.69–0.98. The concrete shear strength (Vc) was also predicted using different shear design provisions and the results has shown that Eurocode 2 provisions yielded the lowest C.O.V. of 2.3 and 10.2% for NWC and LWC specimens, respectively.