Associate Professor, Properties of Materials and Quality Control Institute, Housing and Building National Research Center, Cairo, Egypt
Abstract
This paper presents an investigation to improve the understanding of the shear behavior of reinforced reduced-weight concrete beams made of light-weight expanded clay aggregate (LECA) as a partial replacement (by volume) to the normal-weight aggregates. Eleven reinforced concrete beams divided into two groups were fabricated and tested using the symmetrical two-point loads test. The tested beams consisted of seven reinforced reduced-weight concrete beams and four reinforced normal-weight control beams. The effects of several variables such as type of concrete according to its weight, shear span to depth ratio (a/d), concrete grade and the amount of stirrups were experimentally investigated. The behavior of the tested beams was analyzed in terms of mode of failure, load-deflection response, load-strains response, shear stress- shear strain relationships, first shear cracking loads, ultimate carrying capacity, stiffness and ductility. Furthermore, the test results were compared with the predictions using the Egyptian Code for Concrete Structures, (ECP 203). Despite the experimental results illustrated that the reduced-concrete beams were shown less load carrying capacity, stiffness and ductility than those of the comparative normal-weight concrete beams, the theoretical predictions using the Egyptian Code were quite conservative. This could be attributed to that the effect of arch action is still underestimated in the Egyptian Code.
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