Shear Behaviour of Ferrocement Deep Beams

Abstract

This thesis presents the results of an experimental, numerical and analytical study to develop a design method to calculate shear resistance of flanged ferrocement beams with vertical mesh reinforcements in the web. Two groups of full-scale testing were conducted comprising of three I beams and four U beams. The I beams had the same geometry and reinforcement arrangements, but differed in the matrix strength or shear span to depth ratio. The U beams differed in web and flange thickness, reinforcement arrangements, matrix strength and shear span to depth ratio. The experimental data were used for validation of finite element models which had been developed using the ABAQUS software. The validated models were subsequently employed to conduct a comprehensive parametric study to investigate the effects of a number of design parameters, including the effect of matrix strength, shear span to depth ratio, cross sectional area, length of clear span, volume fraction of meshes and amount of rebar. The main conclusion from the experiments and parametric studies were: shear failure may occur only when the shear span to depth ratio is smaller than 1.5; the shear strength may increase by increasing the matrix strength, volume fraction of meshes, cross sectional area and amount of rebar. The main type of shear failure for I beams was diagonal splitting while for U beams it was shear flexural.Based on the results from the experimental and numerical studies, a shear design guide for ferrocement beams was developed. A set of empirical equations for the two different failure types and an improved strut-and-tie were proposed. By comparison with the procedures currently in practice, it is demonstrated that the methodology proposed in this thesis is likely to give much better predictions for shear capacity of flanged ferrocement beams.

Date of Award	31 Dec 2013
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	Parthasarathi Mandal (Supervisor) & Paul Nedwell (Supervisor)