Force transfer mechanism and shear strength of reinforced concrete beams. Engineering Structures 32, Page (1537

This paper studies the force transferring mechanisms and shear strength of reinforced concrete (RC) beams. The transferring mechanism of shear forces in RC beams can be characterized as the load paths in the disturbed regions and the beam regions. The domains of different regions are proposed to be determined by the beam geometry, the longitudinal and transverse reinforcement. The inclination angles in each region are defined according to the proposed load paths of the force transferring. The disturbed regions are failed due to shear compression failure and shear tension failure. The failure mode of the beam region is shear tension failure. The shear tension failure is the yielding of shear reinforcement and the shear compression failure is the diagonal crushing of concrete. The shear strength due to the shear compression failure can be predicted by the softened strut-and-tie model, and the shear tension failure can be calculated according to the ACI 318-05 code approach. Accuracy of the proposed model is gauged by comparing with the available test data. Finally, the proposed model of beams is applied to columns