Numerical simulation of the shear capacity of bolted side-plated RC beams

A numerical model was developed using the finite element method (FEM) software OpenSees to simulate the shear behavior of bolted side-plated (BSP) reinforced concrete (RC) beams. The multi-layer shell elements, truss elements, flat shell elements, and coupled zero-length elements were employed to model the concrete, reinforcement, steel plates, and bolt connection. Good agreement between the numerical results and the testing in literature indicates that the proposed FEM model can simulate the shear behavior of BSP beams. A parametric study was then conducted to reveal the variation of the shear performance with different factors, including the depth, thickness and yield strength of the bolted steel plates, the diameter, horizontal spacing, and number of rows of the anchor bolts, as well as the shear span ratio. By incorporating the piecewise transverse slip profile and improving the hypotheses in the shear-compression failure model of BSP beams, a semi-empirical design formula was derived based on the force equilibrium of the beam segment outside the main diagonal crack, thus the shear capacity of BSP beams can be evaluated. The accuracy of this theoretical model was then validated by comparing the prediction with the experimental and numerical results.