Shear capacity assessment of reinforced concrete beams with corroded stirrups

- Procedures are proposed for assessing residual shear of stirrup-corroded RC beams.
- Measured width of corrosion crack is used for assessing corrosion damages.
- The proposed procedures are validated using test data available in the literature.

This paper presents proposed design procedures for quantifying the residual shear strength of reinforced concrete (RC) beams with corrosion-damaged stirrups. Most of the building codes worldwide prescribe different approaches for shear design of RC beams in their provisions based on the type of beams: slender or deep. Conventional sectional method is widely recommended for slender beams while strut and tie model which is based on member analysis is recommended for deep beams. To account for the corrosion effects on shear, modifications to the current design methods were proposed. For sectional design method of slender beams, the reduction in cross-sectional area of steel stirrups due to corrosion was considered along with the reduction in geometry of concrete cross section due to spalling. For strut and tie modeling for deep beams, the reduction in effective concrete compressive strength because of corrosion cracks was considered along with the reduction in geometry of concrete cross section. One important feature of the proposed procedures is that the corrosion effects can be determined based on the width of corrosion cracks which can be easily determined in real situations. The proposed design procedures were validated using the experimental test data available in the literature.