Abstract
Providing web opening in the shear-span zone of RC beams results in significant reduction in the shear capacity of such beams. Thus, an efficient restoration technique has to be found out and implemented in order to compensate the developed reduction. The main target of the current paper is to introduce and validate an innovative restoration technique for the new construction making use of the Strain-Hardening Cementitious Composites (SHCC) material. Accordingly, precast thin SHCC plates having the required opening were cast and cured for about 3 weeks to eliminate the volumetric change issues, and then placed inside the formwork at both sides before casting the RC beams included web openings. The chosen thickness of the SHCC plates was 20 mm in order to be easily accommodated in the concrete cover. For the considered openings, the opening depth was kept constant to be 0.30 of the beam effective depth, while the opening length was varied considering three values; 150, 300, and 450 mm. Besides, small amount of internal reinforcement in the form of steel wire mesh was provided inside some SHCC plates in order to enhance their shear strength and ductility. Experimental results showed that the provided SHCC layers enabled the strengthened beams to exhibit distinguished performance in terms of ultimate capacity, ductility and decreased shear crack width. In addition, the gain in shear capacity due to the SHCC plates is decreased with the increase of the opening width. Finally, comparisons between the obtained experimental results and the predicted shear capacities stipulated by the ACI 318-19 and JSCE codes were performed. The comparisons revealed that the estimated shear capacities are in satisfactory agreement with the experimental results, however, these estimations tend to be overestimated with the increase of the opening length.
Published Version
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