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Shear retention factor of cracked concrete

Article · December 2017

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Ngoc Linh Tran

Technische Universität Darmstadt
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DARMSTADT
CONCRETE
ANNUAL JOURNAL ON CONCRETE
AND CONCRETE STRUCTURES

www.darmstadt-concrete.de

VOL. 32 2017 ENGLISH VERSION

 SHEAR RETENTION FACTOR OF CRACKED CONCRETE

Ngoc Linh Tran

The nonlinear behaviour of concrete structures is mainly due to the development of concrete
cracks. After cracking, the forces in concrete members can be transferred over cracks through
aggregate interlock. An increase of crack opening will reduce the normal and shear stresses
transferred over the crack. While the concrete tension softening can be well described as a
function of crack opening w according to Hordijk (1991), the shear softening of concrete is
more difficult to be exactly determined because the shear stiffness does not only depend on
the crack width w but also on the shear slip s. Based on experimental results the relationship

between s and w is described according to Kolmar (1985) as s = 1.4 × w1.2 for normal strength

concrete and s = 1.87 × w1.4 for high strength concrete. This shows that the shear retention fac-
tor also depends on the concrete strength. Considering the influencing parameters of concrete
including elastic modulus Ec, maximum aggregate size ag, concrete strengths fc and fct, a new
formula for shear retention factor b is proposed in this paper, which is formulated by Eq. (a).

1
b= (a)
1 + c × ( w / lch )

Here, the characteristic length is defined as lch = GF Ec / f ct2 according to Hillerborg et al.
(1976) and c is a constant, which is determined according to experimental results. The frac-

ture energy is calculated according to Marí et al. (2015) as GF = 0.028 × fc0.18 × ag0.32 N/mm. In

this study, the factor c is chosen as 20000 based on experimental results of Shinohara (2001),
see Fig. 1. The big advantage of the new formula is that through only the characteristic length
lch many influencing parameters are taken into account.

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 Figure 1: Decrease of shear stiffness with increasing crack opening

The proposed formula for the shear retention factor can be used for calculating the shear
strength of reinforced concrete members without shear reinforcement.

(1) Hordijk, D.A. (1991): Local approach to fatigue of concrete. Dissertation. Delft Univer-
sity of Technology, The Netherlands, 1991.
(2) Kolmar, W. (1985): Beschreibung der Kraftübertragung über Risse in nichtlinearen Fini-
te-Element-Berechnungen von Stahlbetontragwerken. Dissertation. Technische
Hochschule Darmstadt, 1985.
(3) Hillerborg, A; Modéer, M.; Petersson, P.E. (1976): Analysis of crack formation and
crack growth in concrete by means of fracture mechanics and finite elements. Cement
and concrete research, 6(6), S.773-782, 1976.
(4) Marí, A.; Bairán, J.; Cladera, A.; Oller, E.; Ribas, C. (2015): Shear-flexural strength me-
chanical model for the design and assessment of reinforced concrete beams. Structure
and Infrastructure Engineering, 11(11), S. 1399-1419, 2015.
(5) Shinohara, Y. (2001): Shear behavior in fracture process zone of concrete. Fracture Me-
chanics of Concrete Structures, de Borst et al (eds), 2001 Swets & Zeitlinger, Lisse, p.
439-446.

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