Comparison between ACI 318-05 and Eurocode 2 (EC2-94) in flexural concrete design

The two major widely used building design code documents of reinforced concrete structures are the ACI 318-05 and Eurocode for the Design of Concrete Structures EC2. Therefore, a thorough comparative analysis of the provisions of these codes is required to confirm their validity and identify discrepancies in either code. In this context, provisions of flexural computations would be particularly attractive for detailed comparison. The provisions of safety concepts, design assumptions, cross-sectional moment capacity, ductility, minimum and maximum reinforcement ratios, and load safety factors of both the ACI 318-05 and EC2 is conducted with parametric analysis. In order to conduct the comparison successfully, the parameters and procedures of EC2 were reformatted and defined in terms of those of ACI 318-05. This paper concluded that although the adopted rationale and methodology of computing the design strength is significantly different between the two codes, the overall EC2 flexural provisions are slightly more conservative with a little of practical difference than those of ACI 318-05. In addition, for the limit of maximum reinforcement ratio, EC2 assures higher sectional ductility than ACI 318-05. Overall, EC2 provisions provide a higher safety factor than those of ACI 318-05 for low values of Live/Dead load ratios. As the ratio increases the difference between the two codes decreases and becomes almost negligible for ratios higher than 4.