Performance of Steel Fibrous Reinforced Concrete Corbels Subjected to Vertical and Horizontal Loads

Abstract

A softened strut-and-tie macromodel able to reproduce the flexural behavior of corbels in plain and fibrous concrete and with the presence of steel bars, including softening of compressed struts and yielding of main and secondary steel bars, is presented in this paper. The main focus of the proposed model is the determination of the load-deflection curves of corbels subjected to the coupled effects of vertical and horizontal forces bearing in mind the influence of the type of concrete (normal or high strength), of the fiber percentage and of the arrangement and percentage of the main and secondary (horizontal stirrup) steel bars. A validation of the proposed model is made therefore with reference to some of the experimental data available in the literature and also to numerical results obtained by using a nonlinear finite-element program (ATENA-2D) able to analyze the flexural behavior of deep members. Finally some design considerations on the use of fibrous reinforced concrete in RC corbels are given.