Verification of Selected Calculation Methods Regarding Shear Strength in Reinforced and Prestressed Concrete Beams

The purpose of this article was an attempt to compare selected calculation methods regarding shear strength in reinforced and prestressed concrete beams. Several calculation methods were tested. This included codes: PN-EN 1992-1-1:2008 [1], ACI 318-14 [2] and fib Model Code for Concrete Structures 2010 [3]. The analysis also consists of methods published in technical literature. Calculations of shear strengths were made based on experimental works found in literature. The shear strength ratios Vtest/Vcalc were chosen to be the yardstick of comparison, where Vtest is the experimental shear strength and Vcalc is the calculated shear strength. A wide range of variables including shear span/depth ratio, compressive strength of concrete, longitudinal steel percentage helped to verify the applicability of calculation methods. Although most of authorial techniques proved to be unstable, they succeeded to show that codes' formulas for calculating shear strength could still be improved.