Effective area in tension stiffening of reinforced concrete piles subjected to flexure according to Eurocode 2

•There is a lack of treatment of circular cross sections in concrete design codes.•Explicit tension stiffening formulation is presented according to Eurocode 2.•Effective concrete area in tension formulation is given for circular cross sections.•Moment–curvature obtained relationships are compared with experimental results.•Computed deflections are compared with experimental results showing good agreement.

The asymmetric arrangement of reinforcement in concrete pile members employed as retaining earth systems has recently been introduced. The study of the behavior of those members under service loads requires the study of tension stiffening in circular cross sections under flexure. In order to apply tension stiffening, an effective area of concrete in tension is to be defined. General expressions to evaluate the effective area of concrete in tension are given and tested in full scale experiments of members with circular cross sections symmetrically and asymmetrically reinforced.