Failure mechanism of one-way slabs under concentrated loads after local reinforcement yielding

Abstract

One-way slabs under concentrated loads may fail by one-way shear such as wide beams, punching shear, flexure, or by combining two or more of these mechanisms. Nevertheless, most publications have only addressed shear and punching failures without flexural reinforcement yielding. This study investigates the ultimate shear capacity of one-way slabs under concentrated loads with local reinforcement yielding. In total, 12 tests were conducted on six reinforced concrete slabs. Simply supported slabs of 1.60 m × 3.40 m × 0.15 m were tested. Three parameters were varied: the load position, the span length and the reinforcement ratio. All slabs failed initially by punching with limited or extensive reinforcement yielding. Due to the relatively large amount of transverse reinforcement (0.44 %), most slabs underwent a large shear redistribution around the load, resulting in a wide beam shear failure after the local punching failure. The test results were compared to the theoretical predictions of shear, punching and flexure capacity using code expressions and the Extended Strip Model (ESM). The ESM resulted in the closest predictions of the experiments. These experiments confirm that a brittle shear and punching failure mechanism can occur even after extensive reinforcement yielding. Moreover, the results indicate that the ESM can be used to assess one-way slabs under concentrated loads with local reinforcement yielding.