Reinforced Concrete Design

Lecture 1
The contents of this lecture were taken from the book “Reinforced Concrete Design” by Jack C.
McCormac and James K. Nelson, 7th Edition which is published by John Wiley & Sons Inc in 2005.
RLF and JBM
Introduction
Concrete
Concrete is a mixture of sand, gravel or crushed rock held
together in a rocklike mass with a paste of cement and water.
Concrete has a very high compressive strength and low tensile
strength.

Reinforced Concrete
Reinforced Concrete is a combination of concrete and steel
wherein the steel reinforcement provides the tensile strength
lacking in concrete.
 Reinforced Concrete Design

Reinforced Concrete Design- refers to the

determination of the size of a member/s and its
connectivity with other members and the
quantification of reinforcements needed including
their placement and arrangement of these to
withstand the design loads and serviceability
requirements in conformance with design codes.
 Advantages of Reinforced Concrete
as a construction Materials
Reinforced concrete is considered as the most
important construction materials. It can be used for
construction of buildings, bridges, water tanks, retaining
walls, dams, canals, culverts, and many more. It has the
following advantages.
1) In comparison with other construction materials,
reinforced concrete has considerable compressive
strength.
2) It has great resistance to the action of fire and water.
 Advantages of Reinforced Concrete
as a construction Materials
3) Reinforced concrete will provide very rigid structures.

4) The material will require very low maintenance cost.

5) Reinforced concrete has relatively long service life

because the strength of concrete increases with time.
Advantages of Reinforced Concrete
as a construction Materials
The following are the recognized disadvantages of
concrete:
1) Concrete has a very low tensile strength, requiring the
use of tensile reinforcements.
2) Forms are required to hold the concrete in place until
it hardens sufficiently.
3) The low strength per unit weight of concrete leads to
heavy members. This is important for long- spans
structures where dead weight has a great effect on
the bending moments.
4) The low strength per unit volume of concrete means
members will be relatively large, an important
consideration for tall buildings and long span-structures.
High strength concrete is getting very popular.
5) The properties of concrete vary widely due to variations
in its proportioning and mixing. Furthermore, the placing
and curing of concrete is difficult to control.

The other characteristics of concrete that can cause

problems are shrinkage and creep.
 Compatibility of Concrete and Steel
Concrete and steel work together well in reinforced concrete structures. The
advantages of each material seem to compensate for the disadvantages of the
other.
1. The lack of tensile strength of concrete is compensated by steel and the
disadvantage of steel in compression due to bucking is taken cared of by concrete.
2. The two materials bond together very well so there is no slippage between the
two, and thus they will act together as a unit in resisting forces. The excellent bond
obtained is due to the chemical adhesion between the two materials, the natural
roughness of the bars, and the closely spaced rib-shaped deformations rolled on
the bar surfaces.
3. Reinforcing bars are subject to corrosion, but the concrete surrounding them
provides them with excellent protection.
4. The strength of exposed steel subject to the temperatures reached in fires of
ordinary intensity is practically zero, but the enclosure of the reinforcement in
concrete produces very satisfactory fire ratings.
5. Concrete and steel work very well together in relation to temperature changes
because their coefficients of thermal expansion are quite close to each other.
Types of Portland Cement
Types of Portland Cement
mon.
Compressive Strength
Stress-Strain cure for compressive strength of 28-day
concrete
Static Modulus of Elasticity of Concrete
Static Modulus of Elasticity of Concrete
Static Modulus of Elasticity of Concrete
Static Modulus of Elasticity of
Concrete
Dynamic Modulus of Elasticity of Concrete
Poisson’s ratio
Shrinkage
Shrinkage
Creep
Creep
Creep
Tensile Strength of Concrete
Tensile Strength of Concrete
Tensile Strength of Concrete
Tensile Strength of Concrete
Tensile Strength of Concrete
Reinforcing Steel
Loads
Perhaps the most important and most difficult task faced by the structural designer is the accurate estimation of the loads
that may be applied to a structure during its life. No loads that may reasonably be expected to occur may be overlooked.
After loads are estimated, the next problem is to decide the worst possible combinations of these loads that might occur
at one time.
Loads that act on structures can be divided into three broad categories: dead loads, live loads, and environmental loads.
1. Dead Loads - dead loads are those that are constant in magnitude and fixed in location throughout the lifetime of the
structure. Usually the major part of the dead load is the weight of the structure itself. This can be calculated with good
accuracy from the design configuration, dimensions of the structure, and density of the material. In the absence of
definite information about the density of a certain material, minimum values are found in Table 204-1 of Section 204 of
the NSCP.

2. Live Loads – live loads consist chiefly of occupancy loads in buildings and traffic loads on bridges. They may be either
fully or partially in place or not present at all, and may also change in location. Their magnitude and distribution at any
given time are uncertain, and even their maximum intensities throughout the lifetime of the structures are not known
with precision. The minimum Live Loads for which the floors or roof of a building should be designed are given in Tables
205-1, 205-2 and 205-3 of Section 205 of the NSCP. Calculations of minimum loads for other cases shall be in accordance
with Section 206 of NSCP.

3. Environmental Loads – consists mainly of wind pressure and suction, earthquake loads (i.e., inertia forces caused by
earthquake motions), soil pressures on subsurface portions of structures, loads from possible ponding of rainwater on flat
surfaces, and forces caused by temperature differentials. Like live loads, environmental loads at any given time are
uncertain both in magnitude and distribution. Wind loads and Earthquake loads calculations shall be in accordance with
Section 207 and Section 208 of NSCP, respectively.
Serviceability, Strength, and Structural Safety
A structure must be safe against collapse and serviceable in use.
Serviceability
deflections be adequately small, that cracks, if any, be kept to tolerable limits, that vibrations be
minimized, etc.
Safety requires that the strength of a structure, built as designed, could be predicted accurately, and if
the loads and their internal effects (moments, shears, axial forces) were known accurately, safety could
be ensured by providing a carrying capacity just barely in excess of the known loads.

There are a number of sources of uncertainty in the analysis, design and construction of reinforced
concrete structures. These sources of uncertainty, which require a definite margin of safety, may be
listed as follows:
1. Actual loads cannot be determined accurately.
2. Actual loads may be distributed in a manner different from that assumed.
3. The assumptions and simplifications inherent in any analysis may result in calculated load effects –
moments, shears, etc. – different from those that, in fact, act in the structure.
4. The actual structural behavior may differ from that assumed, owing to imperfect knowledge.
5. Actual member dimensions may differ from those specified.
6. Workmanship issues (Actual implementations may be the same as in the plan).
7. Actual material strength may be different from that specified.
Design Basis (Strength Design Method vs. Alternate Design Method)

From the early 1900s until the early 1960s, nearly all reinforced concrete design in the
United States was performed by the Working-Stress Design method now called the
Alternate Design Method (also called Allowable-Stress Design or Straight-Line Design). In
this method, frequently referred to as WSD, the dead and live loads to be supported,
called working loads or service loads, were first estimated. Then the members of the
structure were proportioned so that stresses calculated by an elastic analysis did not
exceed certain permissible or allowable values.
Since 1963 the Ultimate-Strength Design method (now called the Strength Design
Method), frequently referred to as USD, has rapidly gained popularity because: (1) it
makes use of a more rational approach than does WSD; (2) a more realistic
consideration of safety is used; and (3) it provides more economical designs. With this
method the working dead and live loads are multiplied by certain load factors
(equivalent to safety factors). The members are then selected so that they theoretically
will fail under the factored loads.
STRENGTH DESIGN METHOD (ULTIMATE STRENGTH DESIGN)
Introduction

In 1956 the ACI Code for the first time included ultimate strength design method.
In 1963 the ACI Code gave ultimate strength design equal status with working-
stress design, and the 1977 ACI Code made the method now called Strength
Design the predominant method and only briefly mentioned the working-stress
method.
Advantages of Strength Design
The following are among the advantages of the strength design method as compared to the alternate design method:
1. The derivation of the strength design expressions takes into account the nonlinear shape of the stress-strain
diagram. After the resulting equations are applied, better estimates of load-carrying ability are obtained.
2. With strength design a more consistent theory is used throughout the designs of reinforced concrete structures.
For instance, with the alternate design method the transformed area or straight-line method is used for beam design
and a strength design procedure is used for columns.
3. A more realistic factor of safety is used in strength design. With working stress design the same safety factor is
used for dead and live loads, whereas such is not the case for strength design. The designer can estimate the
magnitudes of the dead loads more accurately than the live loads. For this reason, the strength design uses different
safety factors for the two types of loads which is an improvement.
4. A structure designed by the strength method will have a more uniform safety factor against collapse throughout.
The strength method takes full advantage of higher-strength steels, whereas working-stress design only partly does.
5. The strength method permits more flexible designs than does the alternate design method. For instance, the
percentage of steel may be varied quite a bit. As a result, large sections may be used with small percentages of steel
or small sections with large percentages of steel. Such variations are not the case in the relatively fixed alternate
design method. If the same amount of steel is used in strength design for a particular beam as would be required by
the alternate design method, a smaller section will result. If the same size section is used as required by working-
stress design, a smaller amount of steel will be used.
End of Lecture