Shear Capacity of Reinforced Concrete Slabs under Concentrated Loads

Summary The increasing traffic loads in the last decades and changes in design rules may lead to deficits in calculated shear capacity for existing bridges. Most of the present design rules for the shear-bearing capacity of members without shear reinforcement were developed based on empirical evaluations of shear databases consisting of beam tests. So far, only few shear tests on slabs have been conducted. Thus, a research project with an extensive testing programme funded by the Federal Highway Research Institute of Germany (BASt) was carried out at the Institute of Structural Concrete at RWTH Aachen University. This paper presents the experimental results as well as the results of the parametric finite element studies on the shear capacity of slabs without shear reinforcement under concentrated loads. The tests revealed that the experimental bearing capacities were higher than calculated due to an underestimation of the effective slab width. Keywords: shear, bridge, slab, reinforced concrete, effective width, tests, haunched slab, numerical simulation.