An experimental study on the behaviour of normal and lightweight reinforced concrete corbels and analysis with truss/strut-and-tie model

Today, some members of a structure are designed with exaggerated accuracy, but other parts are designed with rule of thumb, empirical methods and experiences. However, all parts of a structure have similar importance. Nowadays truss models are considered to be a rational approach to design of cracked reinforced concrete beam under flexural, shear and torsional effects. But a solution based on a standard truss model is only valid to some region of a structure. In this paper, normal and lightweight reinforced concrete corbels first were designed to TS500(Turkish Standards), and then, a strut-and-tie model was designed with SAP90 program. Strut-and-tie model is attended to analyse all parts of a structure and to consider load path in a structural element. To demonstrate the theoretical results, reinforced concrete corbels having various shear span-depth ratios were produced and tested. Obtained behaviour of tested corbels are concluded with tables and graphics.