STM EXPERIMENTAL VERIFICATION FOR REINFORCED CONCRETE CONTINUOUS DEEP BEAMS

Strut-and-tie modelling (STM) is a very useful tool to analyze and design the irregular concrete deep members. This work presents the results of the experimental tests conducted on two reinforced concrete continuous deep beams that had a constant cross section of 140 mm×500 mm and a total length of 1700 mm. The beams are subjected to single and uniformly distributed load. Each test specimen is designed by using the STM that presented in Appendix A of ACI 318-14 provisions. The cracking load, failure load, deflection, crack pattern, steel reinforcement strains, concrete surface average strains and locations of failure for the tested beams were observed, recorded and discussed. The experimental results (????????) and (????????) are compared with the STM theoretical results (????????????????). Test results indicated that each beam carried loads greater than the STM theoretical design load. In other words, results show that the STM is a conservative method that gives the designers wide flexibility. More specifically, in this study, in case of singly concentrated force, ???????????????? is less than ???????? by about 21%, while ???????????????? is less than ???????? by about 27% in case of uniformly distributed load.