Structural Efficiency of Hollow Reinforced Concrete Beams Subjected to Partial Uniformly Distributed Loading

Reinforced concrete (RC) beams containing a longitudinal cavity have become an innovative development and advantage for economic purposes of light-weight members without largely affecting their resistance against the applied loads. This type of openings can also be used for maintenance purposes and usage space of communication lines, pipelines, etc. RC beams are primarily loaded in the plane of the members, which are two-dimensional in a plane stress state and the dominant structural behaviours include bending, shear, or combination of both. In the present study, six numerical models of RC beams with and without openings were simulated by using commercial finite element software ANSYS to evaluate the structural behaviours of those beam models under the partial uniformly distributed load. Different parameters were assessed, including opening dimensions and shear reinforcement ratios. The obtained numerical results were analysed and verified and were found very close to those obtained from the experimental investigations in the literature. The increase of shear reinforcement ratio could enhance the flexural and shear capacities of the RC beams, and the results also showed that some models sustained flexural failure while the others sustained failure of combined bending and shear.