Shear strength of steel fibre reinforced concrete beams with stirrups

• This study investigates the shear strength of large scale beams with shear carried by a combination of ligatures and steel fibres.
• The results of the experiments are compared to the shear models prescribed in the fib Model Code 2010 and Draft Australian Bridge Code for Concrete Structures (DR AS5100.5).
• The fib alternate model and the DR AS5100.5 model for the shear resistance of SFRC beams predict the shear capacity of the beams well.
• The fib Model Code 2010 model slightly over predicts the shear capacity of the beams.

Despite the increased awareness of Steel Fibre Reinforced Concrete (SFRC) in practice and research, SFRC is yet to find common application in load bearing or shear critical building structural elements. Although the far majority of studies on SFRC have focused on members containing fibres only, in most practical applications of SFRC construction, structural members made of SFRC are also reinforced with conventional reinforcing steel for shear ligatures. In this paper, results are presented on shear tests which have been conducted on ten 5 m long by 0.3 m wide by 0.7 m high rectangular simply supported beams with varying transverse and steel fibre reinforcement ratios. The tests have been analysed along with complete material characterisation which quantify the post-cracking behaviour of the SFRC. A procedure based on the model proposed by Foster (2010) is presented alongside predictions from the fib Model Code 2010 (Final Draft, 2012) and Draft Australian Bridge Code: Concrete (DR AS5100.5, 2014) and is shown to correlate well with the test data.