Shear strength of non-prismatic steel fiber reinforced concrete beams without stirrups

Abstract

The main aim of this research was to investigate the shear strength of non-prismatic steel fiber reinforced concrete beams under monotonic loading considering different parameters. Experimental program included tests on fifteen non-prismatic reinforced concrete beams divided into three groups. For the first and the second groups, different parameters were taken into consideration which are: steel fibers content, shear span to minimum depth ratio (a/dmin) and tapering angle (a). The third group was designed mainly to optimize the geometry of the non-prismatic concrete beams with the same concrete volume while the steel fiber ratio and the shear span were left constant in this group. The presence of steel fibers in concrete led to an increase in the load-carrying capacity in a range of 10.25%-103%. Also, the energy absorption capacity was increased due to the addition of steel fibers in a range of 18.17%-993.18% and the failure mode was changed from brittle to ductile. Tapering angle had a clear effect on the shear strength of test specimens. The increase in tapering angle from (7o) to (12o) caused an increase in the ultimate shear capacity for the test specimens. The maximum increase in ultimate load was 45.49%. The addition of steel fibers had a significant impact on the post-cracking behavior of the test specimens. Empirical equation for shear strength prediction at cracking limit state was proposed. The predicted cracking shear strength was in good agreement with the experimental findings.