Practical shear reinforcement for concrete flat slabs

BY WALTER H. DILGER PROFESSOR OF CIVIL ENGINEERING THE UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY CALGARY, ALBERTA, CANADA

he 1971 ACI Building Code (Ref. 1), for the first time, allowed the use of shear reinforcement in concrete slabs less than 10 inches thick. Although the code permitted it, engineers and contractors havent enthusiastically endorsed the concept. Typical slab shear reinforcement has been costly, hard to place, and only partially effective.

Why use shear reinforcement?

The thickness of most long-span flat slabs, two-way slabs without beams, is controlled by the shear strength of the concrete slab surrounding the supporting column. The shear resistance of these slabs can be increased by providing drop panels, column capitals, or by means of shear reinforcement. If the shear resistance is increased, slab thickness can be decreased resulting in less concrete materials and lower structure deadweight, reducing costs. Drop panels and column capitals, howe ve r, are often not feasible for architectural reasons. They also are costly to build because they dont take advantage of flying forms. Using shear reinforcement reduces the slab thickness and still maintains the flat bottom slab surface for economical forming. But installing typical shear reinforcement, shear heads, and stirrup cages is difficult and costly. The once widely used shear heads are expensive to install and are rarely used anymore. A stirrup cage with longitudinal rebar in both di-

Figure 1. Conventional stirrup cages require large diameter longitudinal bars as anchors. These usually interfere with the column reinforcement making the cages hard to install. Using studded steel strips instead of this conventional stirrup cage, in one case, decreased the amount of steel required from 82 pounds to 20 pounds per column.

rections is difficult to place and interferes with the column reinforcement (Figure 1). To take advantage of the reduced slab thickness and decreased cost that shear reinforcement could provide, a more efficient shear reinforcement has been developed.

Studded steel strips provide full anchorage

This shear reinforcement consists of large-head studs welded to steel strips (see photo). The steel strip is positioned with bar chairs and fastened to the form by nails dri ve n

through holes in the steel strip. The chairs provide the required concrete cover and the nails anchor the strip to prevent movement during construction. These studded steel strips have been designed to be more effective than conventional shear reinforcement. Conventional shear reinforcement is not fully effective because the stirrups cant be adequately anchored into the conc re t e. In thin slabs this ineffective anchorage increases the shear crack width and the shear reinforcement never yields. The ACI Building Code,

design pro c e d u re s. For studded steel strip design, a microcomputer program is available from the manufacturer that does all the work for the designer. When studded steel strips are used, engineers dont have to design concrete-column slab connections that look like bird cages. And contractors can take advantage of the flat bottom slab forming.

Figure 2. The dimensions of the studded steel strips have been set to provide full anchorage and to ensure that at ultimate load the steel studs yield. The steel strip is positioned with bar chairs and fastened to the form by nails driven through holes in the steel strip. The chairs provide the required concrete cover and the nails anchor the stirrup to prevent movement during construction and concrete placing.

recognizing these limitations, requires a conservative design. The dimensions of the studded steel strips (Figure 2) have been set to provide full anchorage and to ensure that at ultimate load the steel studs yield. To achieve complete anchorage and yield at ultimate load, the yield strength of the stud material is specified between 40,000 and 60,000 psi.

Testing proves studded steel strips work well

Tests on reinforced and prestressed concrete panels (Ref. 2 and 3) were conducted to study the per-

formance of the studded steel strips. For reinforced concrete test panels with identical flexural re i n f o rc ement, a panel with no shear reinforcement failed at an axial load of 84,300 pounds. For a re i n f o rc e d panel with studded steel strips, the ultimate load was 133,100 pounds. The prestressed panel tests with studded steel strips showed a 35% increase in moment at failure as compared with the prestressed test panel with no shear reinforcement.

References 1. Building Code Requirements for Reinforced Concrete (ACI 318-71), American Concrete Institute, P.O. Box 19150, Detroit, Michigan 48219. 2. A. F. van der Voet, W. H. Dilger, and A. Ghali, Concrete Flat Plates With Well-anchored Shear Reinforcement Elements, Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering, Vol. 9, No. 1, 1982, pp. 107-114. 3. W. H. Dilger and M. Shatila, Shear Strength of Prestressed Concrete Edge Slab-column Connections With and Without Shear Stud Reinforcement, Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering, Vol. 16, No. 4, 1989.

How easy to design?

Sometimes innovations are slowed by difficult or cumbersome

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