Minimum flexural reinforcement in rectangular and T-section concrete beams

摘要

The prescriptions provided by codes of practice for assessing the minimum reinforcement amount for strength purposes in reinforced concrete beams usually disregard the non-linear contribution of concrete in tension and size-scale effects. In the present paper, these phenomena are taken into account correctly in the description of the flexural failure in lightly reinforced concrete beams by means of a numerical algorithm based on non-linear fracture mechanics. In this context, the application of dimensional analysis permits a reduction in the number of governing parameters. In particular, it is demonstrated analytically that only two dimensionless parameters, referred to as reinforcement brittle-ness number and stress brittleness number, are responsible for the brittle-to-ductile transition in the mechanical response. According to this approach, new formulae suitable for evaluating the minimum reinforcement in practical applications is proposed for both rectangular and T-sections. A comparison with experimental results demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed model for different reinforcement percentages and beam depths.