A Comparative Study on the Flexural Behaviour of Waffle and Solid Slab Models When Subjected to Point Load

The determinations of flexural behavior of some engineering structures are based on different theories and equations, but it has been observed that some of these equations may not give true representation. This work has looked into the difference that may occur between theoretical and experimental results. An experimental test carried out on models of waffle and solid slabs structures were described and results from twenty test samples are presented. Each specimen was subjected to an incremental axial loading of 1 kN interval after 28 days of casting. The flexural moments, deflections and crack width at failure were obtained. The experimental flexural crack and theoretical flexural cracks for both types of slabs were compared. The result for flexural moments for waffle was 5.526 kNm, while solid slab was 3.684 kNm. The deflections showed that waffle slabs has 3.64 mm while solid has 9.28 mm, hence waffle has a higher structural stiffness than solid slabs, but the flexural cracks did not give the same results especially for the estimated crack width. It was concluded that estimated results based on developed equations may not be accurate because it is based on ideal situation.

Chloride diffusivity in flexural cracked Portland cement concrete and fly ash concrete beams

In order to examine the effect of load-induced transverse cracks on the chloride penetration in flexural concrete beams, two different concretes, Portland cement concrete(PCC) and fly ash concrete(FAC), were tested with various crack widths. Total 14 reinforced concrete(RC) beams, ten of which were self-anchored in a three-point bending mode, were immersed into a 5% NaCl solution with the condition of dry-wet cycles. Then, the free chloride ion contents were determined by rapid chloride testing(RCT) method. Based on the proposed analytical models of chloride penetration in sound and cracked concrete subjected to dry-wet cycles, the apparent chloride diffusion coefficient and chloride diffusivity of concrete were discussed. It can be found that the performance of chloride diffusivity in both concretes will be improved with the increase of crack width, and that the influence of convection action will also be augmented. Based on the two samples obtained in sound concrete after 15 and 30 cycles, the time-exponent, m, for chloride diffusion coefficient was determined to be 0.58, 0.42, 0.62 and 0.77 for PCC1, PCC2, FAC1 and FAC2 specimens, respectively. Finally, two influencing factors of fly ash content and crack width on chloride diffusivity were obtained by regression analysis of test data, and it can be seen that factors kf and kw can be expressed with quadratic polynomial functions of fly ash content, f, and crack width, w, respectively.

Lifetime Reliability Analysis of Flexural Cracking for Prestressed Concrete Bridge

Time-dependant reliability is analyzed for the flexural cracking of prestressed concrete bridges under service limit state. The limit state function and random variables are derived from Chinese highway bridge design specifications. For deterioration of structural performances, chloride-induced reinforcement corrosion is emphasized. Through integrating first order reliability method （FORM） and time discretized approach, the time-variant reliability is evaluated. For illustrative propose, the reliability of a typical simply supported prestressed concrete beam is exemplified.

Analysis of stiffness and flexural strength of a reinforced concrete beam using an invented reinforcement system

In this study,we conducted experimental tests on two specimens of reinforced concrete beams using a three-point bending test to optimize the flexure and stiffness designs.The first specimen is a reinforced concrete beam with an ordinary reinforcement,and the second specimen has an invented reinforcement system that consists of an ordinary reinforcement in addition to three additional bracings using steel bars and steel plates.The results of the flexure test were collected and analyzed,and the flexural strength,the rate of damage during bending,and the stiffness were determined.Finite element modeling was applied for both specimens using the LS-DYNA program,and the simulation results of the flexure test for the same outputs were determined.The results of the experimental tests showed that the flexural strength of the invented reinforcement system was significantly enhanced by 15.5%compared to the ordinary system.Moreover,the flexural cracks decreased to a significant extent,manifesting extremely small and narrow cracks in the flexure spread along the bottom face of the concrete.In addition,the maximum deflection for the invented reinforced concrete beam decreased to 1/3 compared to that of an ordinary reinforced concrete beam.The results were verified through numerical simulations,which demonstrated excellent similarities between the flexural failure and the stiffness of the beam.The invented reinforcement system exhibited a high capability in boosting the flexure design and stiffness.

Quantitative crack evaluation in slender reinforced concrete walls with rectangular section

Past earthquakes have shown that cracking affects post-earthquake functionality and accounted for huge repair costs for reinforced concrete(RC)wall buildings,even though the code-compliant seismic design prevents col-lapse.Engineers should know the maximum residual flexural crack width and volume of repair material needed for the flexural cracks to determine the damage degree and the repair cost.This paper presents the experimental campaign on four RC slender walls that investigated the effect of confining reinforcement and thickness of the wall on flexural crack parameters under quasi-static reversed cyclic loading.The width of all flexural cracks was measured when reaching each cycle peak drift and when unloading to zero lateral loads.Crack widths at peak and residual states increased with increasing peak drift.Based on the experimental observations,it was found that the maximum residual crack width is obtained as a simple function of the extreme tension fiber elongation of the wall tensile fiber within±30%error.In addition,this paper outlines methods to calculate the volume of repair material for flexural cracks from the extreme tension fiber elongation of the wall.With the funda-mental rules found from the experiment in this paper,it will become possible to obtain the maximum crack width and the volume of repair material from simple numerical analysis tools such as a multi-spring line element model.