1 Civil and Environmental Engineering Student Conference 25-26 June 2012 Imperial College London

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Shear Resistance of Axially Loaded Reinforced Concrete Sections

W. R, Wan Zulkifli ABSTRACT Throughout the development of design provision for concrete structures, shear design provisions proved to be a very complex subject and are still being the subject of many researches. Its complexity can be seen by what Professor Leonhardt said in his lecture where there are around 20 parameters that governed the behaviour of shear in a concrete section. This staggering complexity has led to many research efforts

to find a rational and adequate theory for shear design provision. However, each of these stated design codes was developed using different shear theories. And due to this theoretical background variation, the shear strength predictions of reinforce concrete sections have been so varied. This is
what the project is set out to tackle. The aim is to determine the relative accuracies of the 3 design codes mentioned in predicting shear strength values, through studying the effect that axial loads have on these predictions. The methodology to do this is by comparing real test results to these predictions and analyse their accuracies. Through an in depth data analysis, it was found that the Eurocode 2 is the least accurate in its predictions. This is because the effect of axial loads is not taken into consideration in Eurocode 2. The most accurate amongst the three is the Modified Compression Field Theory. 1. INTRODUCTION undertaken by researchers to unearth the different shear strength predictions using different design standards, using a set of parametric studies Another design code that is being used in the industry is the Modified Compression Field Theory (MCFT), which forms the basis of shear design provision within the Canadian Standards Association (CSA). This method is different compared to BS: 8110 and EC 2 in a way that the shear strength predictions obtained from this method show very good match to that of experimental results. This difference will be highlighted within this research paper. 2. 2.1 LITERATURE REVIEW Development of Shear Design

Reinforced concrete structural failures in shear are considered more serious and alarming problem than flexural failures, because any inadequacy within the shear design of reinforced concrete structures can lead to a sudden and abrupt structural collapse without any kind of warning. Failures in shear also do not allow for any redistribution of internal forces which further show how crucial it is on the design platform that engineers provide enough reinforcement. However despite the importance of accurately evaluating the shear capabilities of reinforced concrete structures, shear design methods are still open for debate and argument (Collins & Mitchell 2008). This is mainly due to its complexity; from the number of parameters governing shear failures to the impracticality and inadequacy of some of the previous experiments that had been done to generally define a complete and adequate theory for shear (Leonhardt 1970). Over the years, new design codes like the Eurocode 2 (EC2) can be seen preceding the British Standards (BS): 8110 in the structural design provisions for reinforced concrete structures. This leap means that engineers and designers can now design concrete members with much ease, thanks to many of the formulas from BS: 8110 being simplified using experimental results to form empirical formulas. These simplifications however do mean that certain parameters that govern the behaviour of reinforced concrete structures in shear are omitted. This will be elaborated further in the Literature Review section of this chapter, which will discuss previous works that have been
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According to Bentz et al. 2004, existing codes employ different methods in predicting the shear strength of reinforced concrete structures, giving different shear strength predictions varying by factors of more than 2. However, this is not the case in the flexural strength predictions of reinforced concrete sections, where results obtained from each code shows marginal difference of nothing more than 10% (Bentz et al. 2004). The reason for this is because the theory is simple and rational, and the behavior of reinforced concrete structures under flexural loading is easily and unanimously understood. Figure 1 illustrates a collection of reported shear tests on concrete beams without shear reinforcement for the past 60 years. The significance of showing this diagram is clear; many traditional shear tests do not capture the real situation that most concrete beams

experience. First and foremost, out of the 1849 tests handled within this period, only 144 of them are concrete beams of depth exceeding 550mm and result of these tests are only made available in 1996 (Collins et al 2008). Secondly, only 1% of the whole reported shear tests ran the experiment according to actual shear design considerations i.e. continuous members being subjected to uniformly distributed loading.

compression forces apportioned by the flexural lever arm resisting the bending moments. These two means can be represented using mathematical calculus notation as the two components of shear, seeing that shear is a derivative of moment. These two components are; 1) variation in flexural forces acting over a constant lever arm and 2) constant flexural forces acting over a variable lever arm. The first component of shear resistance can be classified as beam action because it is associated with the general assumption that plane section remains plane. Meanwhile the latter is normally identified as arch action or strut-and-tie action since this type of shear resistance is normally affiliated with the action of diagonal compressive struts in reinforced concrete beams.

Figure 1. Experimental test done on members without shear reinforcement in the past 60 years (Collins et al 2008)

According to Cladera & Mari 2007, this simplification of shear strength predictions in the Eurocode 2 allows engineers to calculate shear resistance of reinforced concrete beams fairly quickly and with ease, but it may missed out some crucial parameters that affect the beams shear strength. Within BS: 8110, the concrete contribution, is assumed to increase with axial compression forces and to reduce with axial tension forces. This basically means that reinforced concrete beams will gain extra shear strength with the existence of axial compression and vice versa with axial tension. The Eurocode 2 however does not properly account this factor in determining the shear strength of reinforced concrete beams with shear reinforcement. This is different with the shear provision given in the Canadian Standards Association (CSA), where the MCFT was implemented. According to Bentz et al. 2006 the development of this theory was done by observing a large collective amount of experimental data of reinforced concrete beams loaded either in pure shear or a combination of pure shear and axial load. The theory also considers the compatibility of concrete and reinforcement strains, in addition to equilibrium conditions defined by plasticity. 2.2 Mechanism of Shear Resistance

Figure 2. Beam action versus arch action (Sherwood & Xie 2008)

Given that the distance between the load point and the support is not too big and that the beam has undergone complete beam action, it is possible for the arch action to provide extra shear resistance for the beam. This point was brought forward by Kani et al. 1979 when his experimental results were plotted against the shear span to depth ratio, ( ) as illustrated in Figure 2 above. It can be seen that the strutand-tie model plotted shows very good correlation with the shear strength values obtained from Kanis tests, which means that the load-carrying capacity of the beam once it has undergone the breakdown of beam action has truly increased. 2.3 Comparison Study

According to Fenwick & Paulay 1968 the mechanism of shear resistance in a reinforced concrete member can be carried out by two primary means; 1) flexural tension and 2)
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The Effect of Longitudinal Reinforcement According to the shear design provision given in the EC2 and BS: 8110, the failure of reinforced concrete sections in shear is governed by the percentage of longitudinal reinforcement

provided, not the strain within the reinforcement. This is different to that given by the CSA where the failure shear stress is hypothesised to increase with decreasing tensile stress in the longitudinal reinforcement. Conceptually, this is true because the loss of aggregate interlock capacity on the cracks from beam action will increase the strain within the reinforcement, which means bigger crack widths. All these will ultimately lead to a much lower failure shear stress value. But which of the two design standards theories are better? In order to get the answer, test results from some 44 shear experiments done on simply supported beams as shown in Figure 3 (below) has to be discussed. In these experiments, the beams used only differ in terms of their shear span, a and longitudinal reinforcement percentage, .

investigated. The results of these tests is presented in Figure 4, where the shear strength of 7 reinforced concrete bridge girders were plotted against the reinforcement yield stress, . It is apparent from the diagram that the girder could withstand higher shear stress when the amount of shear reinforcement is increased. This agrees with the predictions made by Response-2000 i.e. MCFT. The average test to predicted ratio for all 7 reinforced concrete girders is 0.99 with a coefficient of variance of only 2.4%. In addition to that, the loaddeformation charts were also accurate in terms of its shape and prediction to that of the tests.

Figure 4. The influence of shear reinforcement on the failure shear stress (Collins et al. 2008)

Figure 3. The effect of varying the amount of longitudinal reinforcement provided (Collins and Mitchell 2008)

All of them have the same depths, d and concrete strengths. The significance of the experiments is to show that concrete beams being loaded in such a way carry values of ( ) that sits in a small range. Based on the graph shown, the red line (the CSA shear predictions) and the blue line (ACI shear predictions) show that for an increasing value of , the failure shear stress remains constant (for ( ) = 260). These predictions are directly true when compared to the test results observed from Kanis and Krefeld & Thurstons experiments (plotted in yellow squares and blue circles respectively). The Effect of Shear Reinforcement The effect of adding shear reinforcement can be studied from a major research project done by Higgins et al. 2004 in Oregon, where the shear strength of 44 reinforced concrete girders was
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Figure 5. Predictions made by multiple design standards showing the influence of adding shear reinforcement (Collins et al. 2008)

Compared to MCFT, EC2 does not take this effect into consideration properly. It is very alarming that EC2 provisions denote that there is no benefit from adding as much as 0.5 MPa of shear reinforcement when experiments conducted in Figure 5 clearly shows otherwise.

The Effect of Axial Loads Within the BS: 8110, the provision of shear strength for concrete members with shear reinforcements is provided by the sum of the shear strength at the point where the beam action breaks down and the shear capacity of the Morschs 45 truss model. Hence, any increase in the axial compression force will lead to a huge increase in the shear strength of concrete members. On the other hand, design standards that are given by plasticity theory like the EC2 will suggest otherwise. According to plasticity based model, concrete members with shear reinforcement will not experience any significant shear strength increase even when the member is under axial compression. This is because the concrete contribution is not supplemented into the calculation of shear strength of such members. Instead, it specifies that the maximum value of cot is 2.5. 3.0 THE MODIFIED FIELD THEORY (MCFT) COMPRESSION

circle of average stress did not cross the origin after the membrane panels have undergone extensive cracking. And that it presented a foreseeable value for the principal tensile stress, . Consideration of these principal tensile stresses has led to the discovery of the MCFT, alongside its equilibrium, constitutive and geometric relationships (shown in Figure 6). 4.0 DATA COLLECTION, PROCESSING & ANALYSIS The research strategy that was engaged throughout this research project, in order to collect and process data, is very much by computational means. Although data were also extracted from published literatures and previous experimental research efforts, the bulk of it was either replicated into or generated by computational softwares. The two softwares that were heavily used within this research are 1) Membrane-2000 and 2) Response-2000. Within Membrane-2000, the data was obtained via 2 ways. The first is from Collins and Vecchios experimental panels. Once the panels were replicated, it was analysed according to MCFT and EC2 shear provision (Analysis 1). The shear strength prediction of these codes is presented in Table 1.
Table 1. Shear Strength Predictions from Test, EC2 and MCFT for Analysis 1 Panels Experimental EC2 MCFT vtest [Mpa] PV4 PV6 PV10 PV11 PV12 PV13 PV16 PV19 PV20 PV21 PV22 PV23 PV25 PV26 PV27 2.89 4.55 3.97 3.56 3.13 2.01 2.14 3.95 4.26 5.03 6.07 8.87 9.12 5.41 6.35 5.8 vpred [Mpa] 2.57 4.76 3.69 3.60 3.19 0.00 1.89 4.17 4.67 5.39 5.42 5.65 5.32 5.85 5.65 5.27 vpred [Mpa] 2.6 4.8 3.8 3.6 2.8 1.4 1.9 4.0 4.6 5.5 6.2 7.4 8.2 6.1 6.6 5.8

The arrival of an adequate theory that is capable of predicting the shear strength of reinforced concrete sections accurately has taken a long time because of the impracticality of traditional shear tests. While the procedures taken to implement them are easy, the results that they produced are inadequate to be used as a basis for a theoretical model. But by using membrane elements to represent and test the behaviour of reinforced concrete sections in pure shear, the researchers from the University of Toronto have been able extract meaningful results that are much simpler to interpret and use as a basis for a theoretical model. This is how the MCFT was finally developed.

Figure 6. The MCFT equilibrium, geometric and stress -strain constitutive relationships (Bentz et al. 2006)

PV28

In MCFT, it was deduced that the diagonal compressive stress, depends not only on but also on the co-existing principal tensile strain, .They also discovered that the Mohrs
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The second part is done by creating a userdefined membrane panel. This panel is loaded under a different loading ratio at every stage and the shear strength is calculated using

Membrane-2000 (Analysis 2). The EC2 shear strength prediction is also calculated for every load stage. Table 2 exhibits the results obtained.
Table 2. Shear Strength Predictions from EC2 and MCFT for Analysis 2

Load Case LC 1 LC 2 LC 3 LC 4 LC 5 LC 6 LC 7 LC 8

Loading Ratios v:fx:fy 1.0.0 1. -0.10. -0.10 1. -0.20. -0.20 1. -0.30. -0.30 1. -0.40. -0.40 1. -0.50. -0.50 1. -0.60. -0.60 1. -0.70. -0.70

EC2 vpred [Mpa] 4.0 4.0 4.0 4.0 4.0 4.0 4.0 4.0

MCFT vpred [Mpa] 4.0 4.5 5 5.8 6.8 8.1 10.2 12.6

Figure 8 on the hand shows the shear strength predictions of Analysis Two. This analysis was done to show how the effect of axial load is taken into consideration by MCFT better than it has by the EC2. And the shear strength results collected showed staggering differences between the two design standards. At Load Case 1, the shear strength predictions made by both codes are still at 4.0MPa. But as the loading ratio is increased from one analysis to another, the MCFT shear strength predictions show steady increase in amount of shear resistance, obtained due to the beneficial effect of the compressive stress.

With the availability of both the shear predictions made by EC2 and MCFT, a comparison analysis can be made to show how each prediction (experimental, EC2 and MCFT) can compare to one another. The first chart (Figure 7) depicts the different shear strength predictions for membrane panels PV23, PV25 and PV28. It is very clear to see that the predictions made by MCFT are the most accurate out of the two. Predictions made by EC2 (green bars) are off by 36.4%, 41.7% and 9.2% respectively. This is mainly due to the fact that EC2 shear provision does not take into account the effect of axial compression in its empirical formula. What more, within the code, the value of cot is limited to only 2.5. One can notice that for panel PV28 (under axial tension), the prediction made by EC2 shows somewhat reliable accuracy. But for this case, the failure shear stress is no longer governed by , instead it is governed by = 0.5 . This limit is set by the Equilibrium Truss Model or the Variable Strut Inclination Method. Therefore this does not by any means show the accuracy of EC2 at predicting sections with axial loads.

Figure 8. EC2 versus MCFT shear strength predictions for Analysis 2

Table 3 summarises the membrane failure types that occurred during Analysis 1. It is interesting to note that for orthotropic membrane panels where the reinforcement ratio of the x- and zdirection varies by a significant amount, the panel would always fail with only the z-direction reinforcement yielding. Also, for all three panels that are loaded with axial stress, the failure type of concrete crushing seems to be in favour. The reason behind this might be due to the high yield strength of the steel reinforcement used, which causes the concrete to crush first before the stress applied is strong enough to cause steel yielding. PV13 exhibits a different type of shear failure than the rest due to its uni-directional reinforcement. The sliding across crack failure happens when = , and is always the failure case when steel is provided only in one direction.
Table 3. Types of membrane failures that occurred

Panels PV4 PV6 PV10 PV11 PV12

Figure 7. EC2, MCFT and test shear strengths for Panels with Axial Loads

MCFT
vpred [Mpa]

Failure Types Yield in both direction Yield in both direction Yield in both direction Yield in both direction Yield in one direction Sliding across crack Yield in both direction

2.6 4.8 3.8 3.6 2.8 1.4 1.9

PV13 PV16
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PV19 PV20 PV21 PV22 PV23 PV25 PV26 PV27 PV28

4.0 4.6 5.5 6.2 7.4 8.2 6.1 6.6 5.8

Yield in one direction Yield in one direction Yield in one direction Concrete Crushing Concrete Crushing Concrete Crushing Yield in one direction Concrete Crushing Concrete Crushing

7.0
1.

REFERENCES
Bentz, E. C. et al. (2006) Simplified Modified Compression Field Theory for Calculating Shear Strength of Reinforced Concrete Elements. ACI Structural Journal, 103 (No. 4), p.614-624. Fenwick, R. and Paulay, T. (1968) Mechanism of Shear Resistance of concrete beams. Journal of the Structural Division, ASCE, 94 (ST. 10). Leonhardt, F. and Walther, R. (1961) The Stuttgart Shear Tests. Cement and Concrete Association Library Translation, (111). Kani, M. et al. (1979) Kani on Shear in Reinforced Concrete. Department of Civil Engineering, University of Toronto. Collins, M. P. et al. (2008) An adequate theory for the shear strength of reinforced concrete structures. Magazine of Concrete Research, 60, p.635-650. Vecchio, F. J. and Collins, M. P. (1986) The Modified Compression Field Theory for Reinforced Concrete Elements Subjected to Shear. ACI Journal, 83 (No. 2), p.219-231. Sherwood, E. G. and Xie, L. (2008) An adequate theory for the shear strength of reinforced concrete structures. Magazine of Concrete Research, 60, p.635-650. Vollum, R. L. (2011) Reinforced Concrete 1: Influence of reinforcement strain on shear strength. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Imperial College London. Canadian Standards Association (2004) Design of Concrete Structures CSA. CSA Committee A23.3. EN 1992-1-1:2004: Eurocode 2: Design of Concrete Structures- Part 1-1: General rules and rules for buildings (2004). European Committee for Standardization, Brussels, Belgium, p.225. BS 8110-1:1997 Structural Use of Concrete Part 1: Code of Practice for Design and Construction (1997). British Standards Institute. London, p.159. Cladera, A. and Mari, A. R. (2007) Shear Strength in the new Eurocode 2: A Step Forward?. Structural Concrete, 8 (No. 2), p.5766. Xie, L., Bentz, E. & Collins, M. (2011) Influence of Axial Stress on Shear Response of Reinforced Concrete Elements. ACI Structural Journal. 108 (6), 745-754. Mosley, B. et al. (2007) Reinforced Concrete Design (to Eurocode 2). New York: Palgrave Macmillan, p.100-111.

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5.0

CONCLUSION

Based on the data obtained and analysed in Chapter Five, the summary provided for the Literature Review in Chapter Two is proven to be accurate. The shear provision given by EC2 for concrete members with shear reinforcement does not present a good representation of the behaviour of shear, especially in members that are subjected to axial loads. The ease of shear formulation that EC2 provides for engineers and designers, while verifies the lower bound theorem of plasticity, shows obvious flaws because it neglects some of the more primary parameters that govern shear strengths of concrete members. As summarised in Chapter Two, the shear provision given by EC2 does not model effects of adding shear reinforcement well compared to CSA and BS: 8110, overestimated the effect of adding longitudinal reinforcements in the beam (Figure 4) and underestimates the effect of axial compression on shear strength (PV 23 and PV25). And because it does not consider the concrete contribution, within its calculation, shear strength of reinforced concrete members with slight shear reinforcement are always being underestimated (PV4 and PV16). This is evident through Figure 6 where EC2 does not predict any increase in shear strength even when there is a 0.5 MPa increase in the amount shear reinforcement supplied. 6.0 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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The author would like to extend his gratitude to Dr. Robert Vollum, for his insight and guidance in completing this paper.