A Simple Approach to Predict the Shear Capacity and Failure Mode of Fix-ended Reinforced Concrete Deep Beams based on Experimental Study

Reinforced Concrete (RC) deep beams are commonly used in structural design to transfer vertical loads when there is a vertical discontinuity in the load path. Due to their deep geometry, the force distribution within the RC deep beams is very different than the RC shallow beams. There are some strut and tie model (STM) already been developed for RC deep beams. However, most of these models are developed for RC deep beams with the simply supported boundary condition, which do not apply for RC deep beams with the fix-ended condition. In this paper, five fixed-end RC deep beams have been tested experimentally which were subjected to monotonic and cyclic loads. Also, a simple STM was proposed to simulate the load capacity and failure mode of fix-ended RC deep beams. The proposed STM has the main strut and sub struts to simulate the force distribution within the RC deep beams. This STM were verified using five fixed-end RC deep beams subjected to monotonic and cyclic loads and compared to the response of 31 additional independent experimental tests. The result shows the newly proposed STM can simulate the load capacity and failure mode of fix-ended RC deep beams very well.