Effect of alkali-silica reaction on the shear strength of reinforced concrete structural members. A numerical and statistical study

The residual structural shear resistance of concrete members without shear reinforcement and subject to alkali-aggregate reaction (ASR) is investigated by finite element analysis. A parametric numerical study of 648 analyses considering various structural members' geometries, boundary conditions, ASR-induced losses of materials properties, ASR expansions and reinforcement ratios is conducted. As a result of competitive mechanisms (e.g., ASR-induced prestressing caused by the longitudinal reinforcement) and loss of concrete materials properties, important scatter in terms of gain or loss of shear strength is observed: about 50% of the studied configurations lead to a degradation of structural performance. The range of variation in terms of post-ASR shear resistance is extremely scattered, in particular, when ASR results in out-of-plane expansion only. Influencing factors are derived by two methods: (i) visual inspection of boxplots and probability distributions, and (ii) information criteria within multiple-linear regression analysis.