Influence of the longitudinal reinforcement on the shear strength of one-way concrete slabs

[eng]The shear strength of one-way slabs is studied in this paper via an experimental program performed by the authors and the analysis of a shear test database. The experimental program, in which six slabs and three beams divided into two series were tested, was developed to study the influence of the slab width, the longitudinal reinforcement spacing and the bottom transverse reinforcement on the shear response of one-way slabs. The results showed that the width and the bottom transverse reinforcement do not significantly affect the shear response of the slab. The shear failure surface depends on the longitudinal reinforcement spacing because a three-dimensional resisting mechanism formed as a result of large bar spacing. A database of 79 tests on slabs was analysed to study in depth the influence of these parameters on the shear strength of one-way slabs. Finally, different shear procedures were applied to the database to evaluate their reliability to predict the shear strength