See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/331744885

EXPERIMENTAL AND NUMERICAL INVESTIGATION ON FLEXURAL BEHAVIOR

OF HIGH STRENGTH REINFORCED CONCRETE BEAM

Conference Paper · March 2019

CITATIONS READS

0 13

4 authors, including:

Sudipta Bhowmick Mohammad Raihan Mukhlis

Chittagong University of Engineering & Technology Chittagong University of Engineering & Technology
1 PUBLICATION   0 CITATIONS    10 PUBLICATIONS   3 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Lateral Strength and Safety Evaluation of Bridge Piers View project

experimental and numerical analysis of high strength flexural member. View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Mohammad Raihan Mukhlis on 17 April 2019.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 4th International Conference on Advances in Civil Engineering 2018 (ICACE 2018)
19 –21 December 2018
CUET, Chittagong, Bangladesh
www.cuet.ac.bd

EXPERIMENTAL AND NUMERICAL INVESTIGATION ON

FLEXURAL BEHAVIOR OF HIGH STRENGTH REINFORCED
CONCRETE BEAM
S. Bhowmick1, M. J. Alam1, M. R. Mukhlis2*&M. A. R. Bhuiyan1
1
Department of Civil Engineering, Chittagong University of Engineering and Technology
Chittagong-4349, Bangladesh.
2
Institute of Earthquake Engineering Research, Chittagong University of Engineering and Technology,
Chittagong-4349, Bangladesh.
E-mail:[email protected]

*Corresponding Author

ABSTRACT
The use of high strength concrete has become popular in construction work because of its improved
strength and durability. High-strength concrete can be used as a substituting material over conventional
concrete for structural members. This study describes the flexural behaviour of high strength reinforced
concrete beam. The variation of flexural ductility with concrete compressive strength is quite
complicated and thus sincerely reviewed in this paper. An experimental and numerical investigation of
high strength reinforced concrete beam has been conducted in the present study. Four simply supported
beams, having compressive strength of 27.50 MPa, 43.85 MPa, 54.05 MPa and 62.01 MPa, reinforced
in top and bottom edges of the beam have been investigated in this study. The beams were tested under
two-point loading to reveal their flexural behaviour. Load-deflection diagram and ductility index are
the primary parameters that were considered in this study. The ultimate loads that obtained from the
experimental results were found to be in good agreement with the numerical results. In addition, this
study also compared the theoretical and experimental deflection at the mid-point of the beam. The
cracking behaviour of all the beams and the crack width is also reviewed in this paper.

Keywords: high strength concrete; flexural ductility; load-deflection; crack width.

INTRODUCTION
In recent years, because of the advancement of concrete technology, the use of high strength concrete
has increased and high strength concrete has been now used in many countries around the world. They
also raised the upper limit of the concrete strength in their building code (Pam et al., 2001) to consider
the higher strength of modern concrete. The use of high strength concrete can improve the durability of
concrete, decrease the shrinkage and creep of the concrete, and reduce the size of the structural member
(Lin et al., 1992). Although, in many cases the behaviour of high strength concrete is different from
normal strength concrete, therefore high strength concrete should not be treated as normal strength
concrete with greater strength. Another problem of high strength concrete i.e. generally more brittle in
nature compared to that of normal-strength concrete (Pam et al., 2001). As high-strength concrete is
more brittle in nature, their crack does not always occur in aggregate-hardened cement paste interfaces
(Ho et al., 2002). It has been found that reinforced concrete beams made of high-strength concrete, if
not properly designed, could fail in a brittle manner (Sarkar et al., 1997). As a consequence, in the
design of reinforced concrete integrating high strength concrete, meticulous checking of ductility,
cracking, and shear strength of the structure is ineluctable.

642
METHODOLOGY
Four beams were tested under simply supported condition. The dimensions of each beam were 915 mm
× 152.4 mm × 139.7 mm. The span length of each beam was 813 mm with 51 mm clearance from the
each end to the support. The span depth ratios taken in this study is around 6 which are lower than the
previous studies available in the literature. To facilitate the cracking patterns on beam during the
application of load, gridding was done. Each unit was 10 mm × 10 mm. The beams were tested under
two concentrated loads with a constant moment region. The distance between the two point loads was
305 mm. The deflections were measured at mid-point. The beams were tested under load control
condition. The deflection was recorded for each 10 kN increment of load up to failure and their crack
pattern was also recorded. The experimental setup of the beam under two point loading are shown in
Fig.1. Material properties and the geometric dimensions of the tested beams are shown in Table 1.

Fig. 1:

Experimental setup

Table 1: Material properties and the geometric dimensions of the tested beams
Beam no. Compressive Depth of the centre Depth of the No. of No. of Top
strength, of bottom Steel centre of top Steel Bottom Steel, Steel A's
fc (MPa) layer, d (mm) layer d' (mm) As
B1 27.50 96.3 25.4 2#16 2#12
B2 43.85 96.3 25.4 2#16 2#12
B3 54.05 96.3 25.4 2#16 2#12
B4 62.01 96.3 25.4 2#16 2#12

Experimental Investigation
The main objective of this experiment program is to investigate the flexural behavior of reinforced
concrete beam. A total of four small-scale rectangular concrete beams were tested. All of them were
reinforced with grade 60 steel. A total of four batches of concrete were used for this study. The designed
compressive strengths for four batches were 27.50 MPa, 43.85 MPa, 54.05 MPa and 62.01 MPa.
Development of first crack in the beam and fracture of the beam during experiment are shown in Fig. 2
and Fig. 3 respectively.

643
 Fig. 2: Development of first crack in the beam Fig. 3: Fracture of the beam during experiment
All specimens were loaded up to failure using a four-point flexural test under monotonic loading
condition. The main variables are the compressive strength of concrete. The overall performance of the
tested specimens was evaluated based on the overall flexural behavior.

Numerical Investigation
In this study the beam is analysed by static pushover analysis method due to incremental load
application. The reinforcement detailing of the beam is carefully maintained and material property that
is used in this program are tried be synchronized with the experimental result. The properties of
concrete and reinforcement details used for experiment program were put in SeismoStruct software as
shown in Table 2. The two point loading was set in the model of the beam by applying two incremental
loads of 10 kN from 305 mm distance of each end of the beam. The two hinge support was placed at the
bottom of the beam at 51 mm from both ends. The analytical model of the beam and development of
first crack in the analytical model of the beam is shown in Fig. 4 and Fig. 5 respectively.

Table 2: Material properties of the beams for numerical investigation

Material Material type Material properties Remarks
name
Concrete 1 Con_ma fc = 15 MPa up to 45 MPa Used in beam B-1 and Beam B-2
Concrete 2 Con-hs fc = 50 MPa up to 120 MPa Used in beam B-3 and Beam B-4
Steel Stl_bl E = 200071.60 MPa Used in all four beams
Fy = 462 MPa

Fig. 4: Analytical model of the beam Fig. 5: Development of first crack in the
analytical model of the beam

RESULT AND DISCUSSION

The parameters used to evaluate flexural performance were flexural cracking load and ultimate load
under the load deflection behaviour, cracking width, ductility index, flexural capacity and deflection
under service load.

644
Load deflection behaviour
Four separate load deflection curves were obtained experimentally and numerically and they are shown
in Fig. 6 and Fig. 7. From Fig. 6 and 7 it can be shown that experimental load deflection curve slightly
varies from numerical load deflection curve and numerical result shows larger deflection than
experimental result except from beam B-1 where the experimental result shows larger value than
numerical one.
The comparison of development of first crack loading and ultimate loading between experimental
results and numerical evaluation are shown in Fig. 8 and Fig. 9. As seen in Fig. 8 and 9 the cracking load
increases with the increase of concrete compressive strength both experimentally and numerically but
numerical results showed larger value than experimental results. But the opposite phenomenon
occurred in case of ultimate load. Here, experimental results showed larger value than numerical results
except for beam B-1 which showed the similar value for both experimental and numerical.

Fig. 6: Load-deflection curve from experimental Fig. 7: Load-deflection curve from numerical
results results

Fig. 8: Comparison of first crack load Fig. 9: Comparison of ultimate load

Cracking behaviour
Crack widths were measured at every load interval at the tension steel level and the crack formations
were marked on the beam. The crack width at the tensile face was measured at every load stage in all the
tests. The cracks forming on the surface of the beams were mostly vertical, suggesting failure in flexure.
From experimental investigation it is observed that the crack widths are increasing for higher strength
concrete. Though in most codes of practice, the maximum allowable crack width lie in the range of 0.10

645
to 0.40 mm (Vidivelli and Subbulakshmi, 2016), all crack widths found from the experiments exceed
the value recommended in codes.

Table 3: Crack width and numbers of cracks for beam

Beam no Max crack width No. of crack between

(mm) loading points
B-1 1.0 2
B-2 1.3 3
B-3 3.1 5
B-4 3.9 6
Ductility index
The ductility index (µd) was calculated depending on (∆max ⁄∆y), where the deflection at ultimate load
(∆max) is the deflection when the load reached 85% of the ultimate load and (∆y) is the deflection when
the applied load reached 75% of the ultimate load (Pam et al., 2001). The variation of ductility index of
beam both experimentally and numerically are shown in Fig. 10.

Fig. 10: Variation of ductility index with concrete compressive strength

From Fig. 10 it has been observed that the ductility index of beam showing large variation between the
experimental and numerical results and opposite trend in the results. The main reason behind this
variation and opposite trend in the result is the inaccuracy in casting of beam with lack of adequate clear
cover and lack of required no. of dial gauge to measure the deflection under two point loading. It is
known that concrete becomes less deformable and more brittle when its compressive strength increases
especially when it is heavily reinforced. This might be the reason behind the decrease in ductility index
for higher compressive strength of concrete.

Flexural capacity
Flexural strength of beams are shown in Table 4. From Table 4 it has been observed that the flexural
strength of beam increases with the increase in the compressive strength of concrete both
experimentally and numerically. This increase in flexural strength is rapid in case of beam B-2 and
beam B-4.

Table 4: Flexural strength of beams

Beam no. Compressive strength (MPa) Flexural strength (MPa)

Experimental Numerical
B-1 27.5 31.98 32.0
B-2 43.85 38.12 37.27
B-3 54.05 39.97 38.29

646
 B-4 62.01 46.73 45.08

Maximum deflection at service load

Comparison between the calculated (δser,ACI), the corresponding experimental deflection (δser,exp) and
numerical (δser,num) at service load are shown in Table 5. From the Table 5 it is observed that ACI 318-11
code expression for Ec value leads to a highly unconservative prediction of (δser,ACI) in terms of
experimental result. But ACI 318-11 code overestimates the predicted deflection in terms of numerical
result except for beam B-3.

Table 5: Experimental, numerical and predicted deflection at service load

Beam δser,exp δser,num δser,ACI δser,exp/δser,ACI δser,num/δser,ACI

No. (mm) (mm) (mm)
B-1 3.90 2.00 2.66 1.47 0.75
B-2 3.95 2.30 2.67 1.48 0.86
B-3 4.00 3.80 2.59 1.54 1.47
B-4 3.40 1.90 2.87 1.18 0.66

CONCLUSIONS
The effect of concrete compressive strength on the flexural behaviour of reinforced concrete beam was
investigated in this study. The load-deflection curves from the beams obtained experimentally are
slightly different from numerical analysis. As concrete compressive strength increases the flexural
strength of reinforced concrete beam also increases. The ductility index increases as concrete
compressive strength increases for the same ρ up to some limit in terms of experimental results
thereafter decreases as fc increases. ACI 318-11 code expression for Ec leads to a highly unconservative
prediction of deflection at service (δser,ACI) in terms of experimental result. The maximum crack width
lies in the range of 1.0 mm to 4.0mm which is larger than code suggested value.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors gratefully acknowledge the support from the Department of Civil Engineering, Chittagong
University of Engineering and Technology, Chittagong for carrying out this research. Also special
thanks to industrial partners Confidence Cement Limited and BASF, Bangladesh for their material
support in this research.

REFERENCES
Ho, JCM; Kwan, AKH and Pam, HJ. 2002. Effects of Using High-strength Concrete on Flexural
Ductility of Reinforced Concrete Beams. The Hong Kong Institute of Engineers Transactions, 9(1):
14-21.
Lin, CH; Ling, FS and Hwang, CL. 1992. Flexural Behaviour of High Strength Fly Ash Concrete
Beams. Journal of the Chinese Institute of Engineers, 15(1): 85-92.
Pam, HJ; Kwan, AKH and Islam, MS. 2001. Flexural Strength and Ductility of Reinforced Normal and
High Strength Concrete Beams. Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers: Structures and
Buildings, 146 (4): 381-389.
Sarkar, S; Adwan, O and Munday, JGL. 1997. High Strength Concrete: An Investigation of the Flexural
Behavior of High Strength RC Beams. Structural Engineer, 75 (7): 115-121
Vidivelli, B and Subbulakshmi, T. 2016. Flexural Behaviour of High Performance Concrete Beams
Subjected to Bending. American Journal of Engineering Research, 5(11): 326-332.

647

View publication stats