Structural Behavior of Highly Strength Reinforced Concrete Beams with Elliptical Arched Bottom

Abstract

This study presents the research results about the testing of four reinforced concrete beams with elliptical arched bottom subjected to static loading. Beams were made and tested under two point load. In each beam have different span of arch (1180, 900, 740 and 600 mm) with the same amount of reinforcing steel and volume of concrete and to find the optimum mho of the arch length to beam span for the maximum load capacity as well as to validate the numerical results taken from the finite element model. From the obtained results, it can be observed that increase of the arch length to beam span ratio increased the ultimate load capacity to more than 40%. Also, a significant decrease in stiffness of beam were noticed when the length span of arch ratio is less. FEM seem efficient and gives good accuracy through comparison with the experimental results where the maximum difference in the ultimate load value was <9%.