Critical review of CSA A23.3-94 deflection prediction for normal and high strength concrete beams

The purpose of this paper is to critically review the provisions of CSA A23.3-94 for the deflection calculations of normal and high strength reinforced concrete beams. Comparison is made with the provisions of CEB-FIP MC 90 and EC 2 which is similar to the MC 90. Both short- and long-term deflections are discussed. Tests from the literature are used to assess the calculation methods suggested by the codes. These methods are the effective moment of inertia approach, the mean curvature approach, and the bilinear method. A parametric study is carried out to investigate the effect of the level of loading, shape of bending moment, and reinforcement ratio on the predicted deflections.Key words: code predictions, deflections, long term, reinforced concrete beams, short term.