CRACK WIDTH PREDICTION USING COMPATIBILITY-AIDED STRUT-AND-TIE MODEL

Often, unacceptable diagonal cracks occur at service load in the vicinity of the re-entrant corners in structures such as the dapped ends of bridge girders and the ledges of inverted T bent caps. Such diagonal cracks are not only visually intimidating but also impose potential danger of corrosion of reinforcing bars. Controlling such cracking is difficult due to the lack of a rational theory for crack prediction. This paper proposes a compatibility-aided strut-and-tie model for predicting the diagonal crack widths at re-entrant corners. The validity of this model is supported by tests of 7 full-scale specimens.