Size Effect on Shear Strength of Slender Reinforced Concrete Beams

In this paper, a comparative analysis is performed on the efficiency of size effect of shear strength models of reinforced concrete (RC) beams made with conventional concrete, self-compacting concrete and recycled aggregate concrete. Four shear strength models that account for the size effect in shear are selected from the literature and applied on the datasets of slender reinforced concrete beams. Beams prepared with conventional concrete, self-compacting concrete and recycled aggregate concrete are considered for the analysis. Results showed that all four models captured the size effect in shear effectively and yielded conservative evaluations of the shear strength for beams made with normal strength conventional concrete. These models yielded unconservative estimates for high strength conventional concrete beams with larger effective depths (>450 mm). The model of Bazant and Kim (1984) captured the size effect precisely and produced conservative estimates of shear strength of self-compacting concrete beams at all the effective depths. Also, shear strength models considered in this study produced unconservative estimates of shear strength for recycled aggregate concrete beams at all effective depths.