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Mohamed 2014
Mohamed 2014
Mohamed 2014
Alexandria University
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Structural Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University, Alexandria 21544, Egypt
KEYWORDS Abstract The exact analysis of reinforced concrete deep beams is a complex problem and the pres-
Deep beam; ence of web openings aggravates the situation. However, no code provision exists for the analysis of
R.C.; deep beams with web opening. The code implemented strut and tie models are debatable and no
Opening; unique solution using these models is available. In this study, the finite element method is utilized
Finite element; to study the behavior of reinforced concrete deep beams with and without web openings. Further-
Reinforcement more, the effect of the reinforcement distribution on the beam overall capacity has been studied and
compared to the Egyptian code guidelines. The damaged plasticity model has been used for the
analysis. Models of simply supported deep beams under 3 and 4-point bending and continuous deep
beams with and without web openings have been analyzed. Model verification has shown good
agreement to literature experimental work. Results of the parametric analysis have shown that
web openings crossing the expected compression struts should be avoided, and the depth of the
opening should not exceed 20% of the beam overall depth. The reinforcement distribution should
be in the range of 0.1–0.2 beam depth for simply supported deep beams.
ª 2014 Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria
University.
1110-0168 ª 2014 Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2014.03.001
Please cite this article in press as: A.R. Mohamed et al., Prediction of the behavior of reinforced concrete deep beams with web openings using the
finite element method, Alexandria Eng. J. (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2014.03.001
2 A.R. Mohamed et al.
The strut and tie model (STM) provides design engineers However, this STM is not unique and varies with the de-
with a more flexible and intuitive option for designing struc- signer’s intuition and past experience. In order to overcome
tural elements. The complex stress flows in a cracked concrete the limitations associated with the development of the STM,
structure are approximated with simple truss elements that can the Finite Element Method (FEM), is applied in the present
be analyzed and designed using basic structural mechanics. study to predict the behavior of reinforced concrete deep
Though the STM is effective for the design of D-Regions, beams. Results are compared to the corresponding code provi-
the method has not yet been widely implemented due to many sions for the design of deep beams using the STM.
reasons such as: (1) the difficulty in fixing an optimum truss FEM has proven to be a versatile tool for studying the non-
configuration for a given structural member with given load- linear behavior of reinforced concrete structures. Current ad-
ing, (2) the complexity and approximation of the solution vances in computational capabilities have motivated the
and the inability of the STM to predict the failure modes of development of large number of commercial finite element
deep beams, Tan et al. [2] and Yang et al. [3]. codes. These codes have shown the adequate reliability and
It has been recognized that the finite element method can accuracy to study the behavior of reinforced concrete struc-
provide realistic and satisfactory solutions for nonlinear tures. In the present study, the damaged plasticity model, as
behavior of reinforced concrete structures. Therefore, the finite implemented in the general purpose finite element software
element software, ABAQUS [4], has been used to study the ABAQUS [4], is used to study the behavior of reinforced con-
behavior of reinforced concrete deep beams with and without crete deep beams. This constitutive modeling has proved to be
web opening under monotonic loading actions. First, the mod- the most stable regime for modeling concrete nonlinear behav-
eling technique has been verified by comparing the model pre- ior. It shows the ability to capture the whole concrete behavior
diction to experimental work in the literature. A parametric up to failure with reliable accuracy when compared to the
study has been conducted to predict the behavior of simply experimental results, Saeed [8].
supported and continuous reinforced concrete deep beams un- The concrete damaged plasticity model in ABAQUS [4] is
der 3-points and 4-points bending configurations. Also, it based on the models proposed by Lubliner et al. [9] and Lee
examines the effect of the location of web openings in both and Fenves [10]. The model uses the concepts of isotropic dam-
simple and continuous deep beams. Finally, the effect of the aged elasticity in combination with isotropic tensile and com-
reinforcement distribution on the overall capacity of the beam pressive plasticity to represent the inelastic behavior of
has been conducted. The results of this study have been com- concrete. The model consists of the combination of non-asso-
pared with the ACI 318-08-Appendix A [5], and the Egyptian ciated multi-hardening plasticity and scalar (isotropic) dam-
Code (EC 203-2006) [6] recommendations. aged elasticity to describe the irreversible damage that occurs
during the fracturing process. The elastic behavior of the mate-
rial is isotropic and linear. The model is a continuum, plastic-
2. Background ity-based, damage model for concrete. It assumes that the
main two failure mechanisms are tensile cracking and com-
Deep beams are defined as members loaded on one face and pressive crushing of the concrete material. The evolution of
supported on the opposite face so that compression struts the yield (or failure) surface is controlled by two hardening
can develop between the loads and the supports. Their clear variables linked to failure mechanisms under tension and com-
spans are either equal to or less than four times the overall pression loading, respectively. Fig. 2 shows the uniaxial tensile
member depth; or regions with concentrated loads within twice and compressive behavior of concrete, respectively, used in the
the member depth from the face of the support, ACI 318-08 concrete damaged plasticity model. As depicted from the fig-
[5]. The EC 203-2006 [6] adopts the same definition as ACI ure, if the concrete is unloaded at any point on the softening
318-08, whereas the Euro Code [7] defines a deep beam as a branch, the elastic stiffness is reduced. The effect of the dam-
member whose span is less to or equal to 3 times the overall age is different in tension and compression, and the degraded
section depth. These structural elements belong to D (Dis- response of concrete is taken into account by introducing two
turbed) regions, which have traditionally been designed using independent scalar damage variables for tension and compres-
empirical formulae or using past experience. sion respectively.
STM is a recent development in the analysis and design of
reinforced concrete structural elements. In STM, the rein-
3. Research program
forced concrete member is replaced by an equivalent truss,
where the compression and tension zones are converted into
equivalent struts and ties connected at the nodes to form a The research program includes two parts; the first part is the
truss resisting the applied loads. validation of the proposed model using experimental data
Design codes provide an extensive explanation and illustra- from literature. The second part is concerned with the para-
tion of the struts, ties and nodes’ shapes, classification and metric study.
detailing. In addition to the permissible stresses in struts and
nodes and the corresponding cross sectional areas of struts 3.1. Model validation
and nodes [5–7]. Fig. 1 illustrates a schematic representation
of the STM developed for deep beams under 3- and 4-points In order to validate the ability of the selected concrete model
bending configurations respectively. to study the tensile and compressive behavior of reinforced
The STM has been subjected to ongoing debates due to the concrete deep beams, a benchmark test has been carried out
difficulty in constructing the optimum truss configuration for a using one of the deep beams (Beam SS-1), studied by Hong
given loading. Traditionally, STM has been developed using et al. [11] for the evaluation of shear strength of deep beams.
load path method or with the aid of stress trajectories. This test serves as a source for comparison with the existing
Please cite this article in press as: A.R. Mohamed et al., Prediction of the behavior of reinforced concrete deep beams with web openings using the
finite element method, Alexandria Eng. J. (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2014.03.001
Reinforced concrete deep beams with web openings 3
Figure 2 Response of concrete due to (a) uniaxial tension, (b) uniaxial compression [4].
experimental results. In the study conducted by Hong et al. response under complicated loading conditions such as the
[11], simply supported beams were instrumented to measure behavior of reinforced concrete deep beams with and without
the mid span deflections and loads. Fig. 3 illustrates the cross web opening introduced in the current study.
section and loading configuration of the tested beam. An 8-
node solid element with one point integration was utilized to 3.2. Parametric study
create the concrete beam mesh. An embedded truss reinforce-
ment a 2-node linear 3D truss element was used to model steel The research program for the parametric study conducted in
rebars. The mesh used in this validation is shown in Fig. 4. this paper consists of (9) deep beams. All the studied beams
Fig. 5 illustrates the load–deflection response of the studied had a clear span (lc) of 6000 mm, a depth (d) of 2000 mm deep
beam in comparison with the experimental results obtained by and a width (b) of 500 mm. Fig. 6 shows the studied beams’
Hong et al. [11]. The modeled response verifies the ability of geometry and dimensions, while Fig. 7 shows typical example
the selected model to capture the whole beam’s behavior up for the meshing of deep beam DS3-1W.
to failure and shows a good agreement to the experimental re- The studied beams were categorized in three main groups;
sults. The results of the model can be used in validating and the first group is for simply supported deep beams with and
guiding experimental work, in addition to exploring concrete without web openings under 3-points bending (Beams DS3-0,
Please cite this article in press as: A.R. Mohamed et al., Prediction of the behavior of reinforced concrete deep beams with web openings using the
finite element method, Alexandria Eng. J. (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2014.03.001
4 A.R. Mohamed et al.
Figs. 8–10 show the load deflection response of the simply sup-
ported deep beams under 3-points and 4-points bending and
continuous deep beam respectively. It can be depicted from
these figures that the presence of web openings crossing the
compression struts developed between the load and the sup-
ports (case of beams DS3-2W, DS4-2W, DC-1W) resulted in
a substantial reduction in the failure load and the beam’s over-
all capacity. This reduction ranges from 33% in case of the
simply supported deep beam under 3-points bending to 36%
in case of the simply supported deep beam under 4-points
Figure 4 The applied mesh for beam SS-1.
bending. However, when the web openings were located out-
side the expected line of action of compression struts, the
reduction in the failure load ranged from 3% in case of beam
DS4-1W to 15% in case of beam DS3-1W
7 10 5
In order to study the effect of the size of the web opening on
the beam’s overall capacity, four different web openings were
6 10 5
considered in Beam DS3-1W with length ranging from 0.1 lc
to 0.2 lc and a total depth from 0.075d to 0.3d. Fig. 11 illustrates
5 10 5 the load–deflection response of Beam DS3-1W for different web
opening sizes and the corresponding failure load. As depicted
Load (KN)
4 10 5 from this figure, for deep beams having the same web opening
depth, the reduction in the failure load due to the increase in
3 10 5 the web opening width from B1 = 600 mm to B2 = 2B1 =
1200 mm is negligible. On the other hand, for deep beams hav-
2 10 5
ing a constant web opening width and a variable depth from H1
to H2 = 2H1, the reduction in the failure load and the beam
Model
Experimental capacity was about 7%. Therefore, the most important observa-
1 10 5
tion that can be deduced from Fig. 11 is that, as long as the
opening does not interfere with the load path or stress trajecto-
0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ries, i.e. compression struts, the depth is the most important
Mid-Span Deflection (mm) parameter influencing the beam’s overall capacity. Hence, for
an overall reduction in the beam’s capacity not exceeding
Figure 5 Comparison of load–deflection response for the applied 10%, the depth of the central opening should not exceed 20%
material model vs. experimental results. of the beam overall depth (0.2d).
Please cite this article in press as: A.R. Mohamed et al., Prediction of the behavior of reinforced concrete deep beams with web openings using the
finite element method, Alexandria Eng. J. (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2014.03.001
Reinforced concrete deep beams with web openings 5
Please cite this article in press as: A.R. Mohamed et al., Prediction of the behavior of reinforced concrete deep beams with web openings using the
finite element method, Alexandria Eng. J. (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2014.03.001
6 A.R. Mohamed et al.
4.4. The stress and strain distributions range varies according to the type of the applied loads and the
boundary conditions. In the present study, this guideline was
The stress and strain distributions for all the studied deep reviewed for simply supported deep beams by distributing
beams at failure, have been extracted and evaluated. Typical the main tension reinforcement over varying depths ranging
example of these distributions is shown in Fig. 14. As expected, from 0.05 to 0.4 of the total beam depth (H). The effect of rein-
the strain distribution is nonlinear and the stress distribution in forcement distribution on the beam capacity has been studied
tension is limited to the assumed tensile strength of concrete, and the stress distribution in reinforcing steel has been moni-
while the compressive stress simulates that assumed by the tored. Fig. 15 illustrates the different reinforcement distribu-
code. tion applied in the present study.
The simply supported reinforced concrete deep beam under
3-points bending, (Beam DS3-0) illustrated in Fig. 6a, was
4.5. Effect of reinforcement distribution studied for the different reinforcement distribution. Fig. 16
illustrates the load–deflection response of the beam and the ob-
Since 2003, the EC 203-2006 Committee has issued a hand- served reduction in the beam capacity with increasing rein-
book for the detailing of structural members. This handbook forcement depth.
introduces some guidelines for reinforcement detailing of dif- From the figure, it can be depicted that no significant reduc-
ferent structural members. For simply supported deep beams tion in the beam’s capacity was observed when the reinforce-
under uniformly distributed loads, it is recommended that ment depth increased from 0.05H to 0.1H. However, a
the main tension reinforcement should be distributed along a reduction of 6.0% in the beam capacity was detected when
depth ranging from 0.15 to 0.3 of the overall beam depth. This the upper limit specified in the handbook for reinforcement
Please cite this article in press as: A.R. Mohamed et al., Prediction of the behavior of reinforced concrete deep beams with web openings using the
finite element method, Alexandria Eng. J. (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2014.03.001
Reinforced concrete deep beams with web openings 7
5000 12000
Beam DC-0
10000
4000
Beam DC-1W
8000
Total Load (KN)
2000
Beam DS3-2W
4000
Figure 8 Load–deflection response of simply supported deep Figure 10 Load–deflection response of continuous deep beams.
beams under 3-points bending configuration.
3000
5000 2500
Beam DS4-0
4000 2000
Total Load (KN)
Beam DS4-1W
Total Load (KN)
3000 1500
Beam DS4-2W
2000 1000
0 0
0 2 4 6 8 10 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Mid-Span Deflection (mm) Mid-Span Deflection (mm)
Figure 9 Load–deflection response of simply supported deep Figure 11 Load–deflection response of beam DS3-1W for
beams under 4-points bending configuration. different web openings.
Please cite this article in press as: A.R. Mohamed et al., Prediction of the behavior of reinforced concrete deep beams with web openings using the
finite element method, Alexandria Eng. J. (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2014.03.001
8 A.R. Mohamed et al.
0 0
500 500
Beam Depth (mm)
1000 1000
1500 1500
2000 2000
4 2 0 -2 -4 -6 -8 0.003 0.0025 0.002 0.0015 0.001 0.0005 0 -0.0005
Stress (MPa) Strain
Please cite this article in press as: A.R. Mohamed et al., Prediction of the behavior of reinforced concrete deep beams with web openings using the
finite element method, Alexandria Eng. J. (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2014.03.001
Reinforced concrete deep beams with web openings 9
H = 2000 mm
0.4 H
0.3 H
0.2 H
0.1 H
0.05 H
B = 50mm
0
Table 4 The strut and tie width for beam DS4-0. 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4
Current study ACI 318-08 EC (203-2006) Central Deflection (mm)
400
150
R1 @ 75mm
R2 @ 100mm
100
Table 6 Reduction in beam capacity due to reinforcement
distribution. 50
Please cite this article in press as: A.R. Mohamed et al., Prediction of the behavior of reinforced concrete deep beams with web openings using the
finite element method, Alexandria Eng. J. (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2014.03.001
10 A.R. Mohamed et al.
400 400
R1@75mm
350 350 R2@256mm
R3@437mm
R4@619mm
300 300
R5@800mm
250 250
Stress (MPa)
Stress (MPa)
200 200
150 150
R1@75mm
100 R2@137mm 100
R3@200mm
50 50
0 0
0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000
Figure 18 Stress distribution in rebars (distribution Figure 21 Stress distribution in rebars (distribution
depth = 0.1H). depth = 0.4H).
Please cite this article in press as: A.R. Mohamed et al., Prediction of the behavior of reinforced concrete deep beams with web openings using the
finite element method, Alexandria Eng. J. (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2014.03.001
Reinforced concrete deep beams with web openings 11
5. The effect of reinforcement distribution on the beam capac- [4] ABAQUS User Manual, Version 6.7, ABAQUS Inc.,
ity was studied and the stress distribution in reinforcing Pawtucket, Rhode Island, 2007.
steel has been monitored. A reduction, ranging from [5] ACI 318-08, Building Code Requirements for Structural
0.3% to 12% in the beam capacity, was observed, when Concrete and Commentary.
[6] EC, Egyptian Code for the Design and Construction of
the tension reinforcement distribution depth was increased
Concrete Structures (203-2006).
from 0.1H to 0.4H. Thus, it is suggested that the reinforce-
[7] BS EN1992-1-1: 2004, Eurocode 2: Design of concrete structures
ment distribution should be in the range of 0.1–0.2H for – Part 1-1: General rules and rules for buildings.
simply supported deep beams. [8] J.M. Saeed, Modeling of the Mechanical Behavior of Concrete,
M.Sc. Thesis, Structural Eng. Dept., Faculty of Engineering,
Alexandria University, 2012, p. 163.
References [9] J. Lubliner, J. Oliver, S. Oller, E. Onate, A plastic-damage
model for concrete, Int. J. Solids Struct. 25 (3) (1989) 299–326.
[1] P. Nagarajan, P.T.M. Madhavan, Development of strut and tie [10] J. Lee, G.L. Fenves, A plastic-damage model for cyclic loading
models for simply supported deep beams using topology of concrete structures, J. Eng. Mech., ASCE 124 (8) (1998) 892–
optimization, Songklanakarin J. Sci. Technol. 30 (5) (2008) 900.
641–647. [11] S. Hong, D. Kim, S. Kim, N. Hong, Shear strength of reinforced
[2] K.H. Tan, K. Tong, C.Y. Tang, Consistent strut-and-tie concrete deep beams with end anchorage failure, ACI Struct. J.
modeling of deep beams with web openings, Mag. Concr. Res. 99 (1) (2002) 12–22.
55 (1) (2003) 572–582.
[3] K. H Yang, H.C. Eun, H.S. Chung, The influence of web
openings on the structural behavior of reinforced high-strength
concrete deep beams, Eng. Struct. 28 (13) (2006) 1825–1834.
Please cite this article in press as: A.R. Mohamed et al., Prediction of the behavior of reinforced concrete deep beams with web openings using the
finite element method, Alexandria Eng. J. (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2014.03.001