BEHAVIOUR OF WIDE REINFORCED CONCRETE BEAMS WITH DIFFERENT SHEAR STEEL PLATES SPACING

This paper presents an experimental investigation of the behavior of wide reinforced concrete beams with different shear steel plate spacing. Four reinforced concrete wide beams with the dimensions of 215x560x1800mm are investigated. The variables studied in this work are using the 10mm stirrups with 125mm spacing and 3mm thick steel plate with spacing 125, 166, and 250mm instead of reinforcing stirrups. Shear steel plates are a good alternative for stirrups and give identical results in yield and ultimate loads and increase the ductility by 55% and reduced the strain on the exterior and interior legs by 17% and 46% respectively compared with stirrups also reducing the total weight of wide beams by 2.7%. By increasing the spacing of the shear steel plate by 33% and 100%, the results showed that the yield load reduced to 5% and 12%, respectively, but the deflection was increased by 2% and 16%, respectively (at yield). The strain on interior legs is more than the strain on the exterior legs (having a spacing of 125, 166, and 250mm) by 31%, 70%, and 1% respectively. ACI 318-14(1) and EC 2(2) codes are given a predicted deflection less than the experimental deflection by 19% and 21% on average, respectively.