The Effect of Shear Span-to-Depth Ratio (a/d) on the Behavior of Steel Fiber Reinforced Concrete Beams Incorporating Fracture Properties

Abstract

This study aims to determine the structural effects of the shear span-to-depth ratio (a/d) on the behavior of SFRC beams using finite element software Abaqus. Three-dimensional models were developed and validated against published experimental results to ensure the reliability of the numerical analysis. The beams were analyzed under two conditions: with and without the incorporating of the fracture properties, in order to evaluate their effect on predicting the realistic structural response. The results showed that the reducing the shear span-to-depth ratio (a/d) from 5 to 2 led to noticeable increase in the ultimate load-carrying capacity, with maximum improvement of about 6.76% when fracture properties were included compared to the case without them. Moreover, the incorporating of fracture properties resulted in an increase of approximately 11.4% in the mid-span deflection at failure. However, the overall deflection tended to decrease with smaller (a/d) ratios, indicating an increase in overall stiffness and a reduction in ductility. Moreover, reducing the ratio (a/d) led to an increase in the maximum shear stresses (At failure), where this increase reached 25.8% when fracture properties were included in the analysis.