• Computers and Concrete
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.1175-1194
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• 2016

Nonlinear models, capable of taking into account all the phenomena involved in the cracking and in the failure of lightly reinforced concrete beams, are nowadays available for a rigorous calculation of the minimum reinforcement. To simplify the current approaches, a new procedure is proposed in this paper. Specifically, the ductility index, which is lower than zero for under-reinforced concrete beams in bending, is introduced. The results of a general model, as well as the data measured in several tests, reveal the existence of two linear relationships between ductility index, crack width, and the amount of steel reinforcement. The above relationships can be applied to a wide range of lightly reinforced concrete beams, regardless of the geometrical dimensions and of the mechanical properties of materials. Accordingly, if only a few tests are combined with this linear relationships, a new design-by-testing procedure can be used to calculate the minimum reinforcement, which guarantees both the control of cracking in service and the ductility at failure.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.55-62
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• 1999

When stress is beyond elastic limit or cracks occur in a reinforced concrete member subjected to axial force and biaxial bending, curvature about each principal axis of uncracked section is influenced by axial force and bending moments about both major and minor principal axes. It is mainly due to the translation and rotation of principal axes of the cross section after cracking. Recently, by considering these effects, a numerical method predicting the behavior of concrete columns subjected to axial force and biaxial bending was proposed. In this study, in order to verify the proposed numerical method and investigate the effects of cracking on the behavior of reinforced concrete columns, a series of tests were carried out for 16 tied reinforced concrete columns with 100×100 mm square and 200×100 mm rectangular sections under various loading conditions. The angle between the direction of eccentricity and the major principal axis of uncracked section were 0, 30, 40° for the square section and 0, 30, 45, 60, 90° for the rectangular section, respectively. A comparison between numerical predictions and test results shows good agreements in ultimate loads, axial force-lateral deflection relations, and lateral deflection trajectories. It is also found, in this limited investigation, that the ACI's moment magnifier method is conservative in both uniaxial and biaxial loading conditions.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.191-201
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• 2017

External pre-stressing is often used in strengthening or retrofitting of steel-concrete composite beams. In this way, a proper numerical model should be able to trace the completely nonlinear response of these structures at service and ultimate loads. A three dimensional finite element model based on shell elements for representing the concrete slab and the steel beam are used in this work. Partial interaction at the slab-beam interface can be taken into account by using special beam-column elements as shear connectors. External pre-stressed tendons are modeled by using one-dimensional catenary elements. Contact elements are included in the analysis to represent the slipping at the tendon-deviator locations. Validation of the numerical model is established by simulating seven pre-stressed steel-concrete composite beams with experimental results. The model predictions agree well with the experimental results in terms of collapse loads, path failures and cracking lengths at negative moment regions due to service loads. Finally, the accuracy of some simplified formulas found in the specialized literature to predict cracking lengths at interior supports at service loading and for the evaluation of ultimate bending moments is also examined in this work.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.63 no.5
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• pp.669-681
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• 2017

The design of reinforced concrete buildings must satisfy the serviceability stiffness criteria in terms of maximum lateral deflections and inter story drift in order to prevent both structural and non-structural damages. Consideration of plastic hinge formation is also important to obtain accurate failure mechanism and ultimate strength of reinforced concrete frames. In the present study, an iterative procedure has been developed for the analysis of reinforced concrete frames with cracked elements and consideration of plastic hinge formation. The ACI and probability-based effective stiffness models are used for the effective moment of inertia of cracked members. Shear deformation effect is also considered, and the variation of shear stiffness due to cracking is evaluated by reduced shear stiffness models available in the literature. The analytical procedure has been demonstrated through the application to three reinforced concrete frame examples available in the literature. It has been shown that the iterative analytical procedure can provide accurate and efficient predictions of deflections and ultimate strength of the frames studied under lateral and vertical loads. The proposed procedure is also efficient from the viewpoint of computational time and convergence rate. The developed technique was able to accurately predict the locations and sequential development of plastic hinges in frames. The results also show that shear deformation can contribute significantly to frame deflections.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.797-804
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• 2009

The structural designs of RC flat plates that have insufficient flexural stiffness due to lack of support from boundary beams may be governed by serviceability as well as a strength criteira. Specially, since over-loading and tensile cracking in early-aged slabs significantly increase the deflection of a flat plate system under construction, a construction sequence and its impact on the slab deflections may be decisive factors in designs of flat plate systems. In this study, the procedure of calculating slab deflections considering construction sequences and concrete cracking effects is proposed. The construction steps and the construction loads are defined by the simplified method, and then the slab moments, elastic deflections, and the effective moment of inertia are calculated in each construction step. The elastic deflections in column and middle strips are magnified to inelastic deflections by the effective moment of inertia, and the center deflection of slab are calculated by the crossing beam method. The proposed method is verified by comparisons with the existing test result and the nonlinear analysis result. Also, by applications of the proposed method, the effects of the slab construction cycle and the number of shored floors on the deflections of flat plates under construction are analyzed.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.99-106
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• 2001

The main objective of this study is to develop a continuity of double tee slab with two modified dap-ends to solve the problems of excessive moment, slab depth, deflection, and joint cracking in the original simply supported double tee slab systems. The modified joint is produced in a combination with two slabs with modified dap and one rectangular beam. The modified joint can be justified as following different merits. The span capacity for a design load is increased, while the deflection of the slab is decreased due to the decrease of positive moment at the center span of the slab. The joint cracking between slab and beam, which occur frequently in the original slab systems of double tee will be reduced. No more additional form work is needed to cast topping concrete for continuity. Three point loading tests are performed on the specimens with a variable of an amount of main longitudinal reinforcement to evaluate flexural and shear behavior. Following conclusions are obtained from the experimental investigation. The continuity of double tee slab effectively is provided by placing longitudinal steel reinforcement in the topping concrete over the connection, and generally leads to an increase in span capacity of double tee slabs with reduced deflection. It is more effective to control the initial cracking at the connection than that of some simply supported double tee slab systems.

• Magazine of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.118-128
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• 1994

There have been conducted a lot of works on shear behavior of steel fiber reinforced concrete beams. Fiber reinforced concrete beams without shear reinforcement were tested to determine their cracking shear strengths and ultimate shear capacities. Results of tests on 14 reinforced concrete beams (including 11 containing steel fibers) are reported. Two parameters were varied in the study, namely, the volume fraction of fibers and shear span-to-depth ratio.The effects of fiber incorporation on failure modes, deflections, cracking shear strength, and ul~imate shear strength have been examined. Resistance to shear stresses have been found to be improved by the inclusion of fibers, The mode of failure changed from shear to flexure when the shear span-to-depth ratio exceeds 3.4. Based on these investigations, a method of computing the shear strength of steel fiber reinforced concrete beam is suggested. The comparisons between computed values and expenmentally observed values are shown to verify the proposed theoretical treatment and steel fibers efficiency.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.997-1018
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• 2015

Structural health monitoring along with damage detection and assessment of its severity level in non-accessible reinforced concrete members using piezoelectric materials becomes essential since engineers often face the problem of detecting hidden damage. In this study, the potential of the detection of flexural damage state in the lower part of the mid-span area of a simply supported reinforced concrete beam using piezoelectric sensors is analytically investigated. Two common severity levels of flexural damage are examined: (i) cracking of concrete that extends from the external lower fiber of concrete up to the steel reinforcement and (ii) yielding of reinforcing bars that occurs for higher levels of bending moment and after the flexural cracking. The purpose of this investigation is to apply finite element modeling using admittance based signature data to analyze its accuracy and to check the potential use of this technique to monitor structural damage in real-time. It has been indicated that damage detection capability greatly depends on the frequency selection rather than on the level of the harmonic excitation loading. This way, the excitation loading sequence can have a level low enough that the technique may be considered as applicable and effective for real structures. Further, it is concluded that the closest applied piezoelectric sensor to the flexural damage demonstrates higher overall sensitivity to structural damage in the entire frequency band for both damage states with respect to the other used sensors. However, the observed sensitivity of the other sensors becomes comparatively high in the peak values of the root mean square deviation index.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.365-374
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• 2017

With the continuous evolution of the numerical methods and the availability of advanced constitutive models, it became a common practice to use complex physical and geometrical nonlinear numerical analyses to estimate the structural behavior of reinforced concrete elements. Such simulations may yield the complete time history of the structural behavior, from the first moment the load is applied until the total collapse of the structure. However, the evolution of the cracking pattern in geometrical discontinuous zones of reinforced concrete elements and the associated failure modes are relatively complex phenomena and their numerical simulation is considerably challenging. The objective of the present paper is to assess the applicability of the Applied Element Method in simulating the development of distinct failure modes in reinforced concrete walls subjected to monotonic loading obtained in experimental tests. A pushover test was simulated numerically on three distinct RC shear walls, all presenting an opening that guarantee a geometrical discontinuity zone and, consequently, a relatively complex cracking pattern. The presence of different reinforcement solutions in each wall enables the assessment of the reliability of the computational model for distinct failure modes. Comparison with available experimental tests allows concluding on the advantages and the limitations of the Applied Element Method when used to estimate the behavior of reinforced concrete elements subjected to monotonic loading.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.20-27
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• 2014

In the construction site, various earth retaining systems are developed and applied to maintain stability of excavated area and structures. Among the methods, the underground continuous wall and the column-type diaphragm wall methods are especially used in construction site nearby buildings or roads. However, these methods have some disadvantages such as the difficulty of quality control and long curing time because these methods need to cast fresh concrete at the construction site. In addition, these methods are usually applied to the site for the temporary purpose. In this paper, we suggest precast hollow prestressed concrete pile for continuous pile wall system. To investigate the structural behavior of suggested pile, which is the main member of the suggested system, tests pertaining to the structural behavior and prestressing force applied in the pile are conducted. From the test results, it was found that the prestressing force measured is sufficient compared with the value obtained by the design equation and the cracking moment measured is 34% higher than the design value. In addition to the above, this precast hollow prestressed concrete pile has an additional safety margin that the maximum moment is 59.2% higher than the cracking moment which is one of the serviceability limits for the design of the system.