Shear Softening Characteristics of Reinforced Concrete Deep Beams

Abstract

This paper studies the shear softening characteristics of reinforced concrete deep beams. A mechanical model for the macroscopic shear failure is developed in the paper and it focuses on the entire load-displacement relationship. The method makes use of the rotating smeared crack model and the truss model, combined into a single simple model. The analysis described in the paper includes the development of multiple diagonal cracks and macroscopic shear crack propagation. The model is found to provide good agreement with the experiments. The analytical results point out that the shear softening characteristics depends on the size of specimens, the shear-span ratio, the shear reinforcement and the confinement.