Finite Element Simulation of Concrete Slabs with various Placement and Amount of Shear Bolts

Three-dimensional (3-D) finite element analysis (FEA) in ABAQUS software examines the punching shear behaviour of reinforced concrete slabs. Four interior reinforced concrete slab-column connections (one slab is without shear reinforcement, while the other slabs are with shear bolts) previously tested under static loading are analysed. The shear reinforced slabs differ in the amount of the shear bolts. The coupled plasticity damaged model previously calibrated is considered for modelling the concrete. In this paper, parametric studies are presented to examine the effect of the amount and placement of the shear bolts. The amount of shear bolts is increased by adding more rows of shear bolts and also decreased by considering less shear bolts in each row. Also, two different arrangements are studied: rectangular and radial. The adopted FEA model is used to analyse and investigate the failure modes, loads and the crack patterns of the slab-column connections. The numerical results are compared to two current design codes for punching shear (ACI 318-14 and EC2-2004).