Shear Strength of Reinforced Recycled Aggregate Concrete Corbels

Abstract

This paper is related to a laboratory program for the shear strength of reinforced concrete corbels (RCC) cast with or without recycled aggregate (RA) by investigating the main parameters affecting the corbels behavior including the replacement aggregate recycling ratio, fcu, and shear span to effective depth ratio a/d. Eight specimens were cast and tested. The obtained results were compared with ACI and EC2 codes. It is found that the ACI code and E2 code give sensibly conservative results when compared with the findings of the present work for all tested specimens regarding RA, concrete strength, and a/d. Also, the experimental results show that the presence of recycled aggregate decreases slightly both cracking and failure loads. Furthermore, the failure load development due to the effect of compressive strength is more effective with the presence of recycled aggregate, and the 50% ratio of RA was the suitable ratio in elaborate crack and failure loads. Finally, the reduction of the span-depth ratio (from 0.50 to 0.35) increases the crack and failure load by 8.1% and 20.2%, respectively, leading to confirm that the corbel strength is much sensitive to decreasing span-depth ratio compared to the associated deflections.