Shear resistance of welded inclined bars in rectangular reinforced concrete beams

The bent-up bars have not been used as shear reinforcement in beams since the past 40 years or so. In all cases of design and construction nowadays, shear forces are resisted by vertical links only. Some complications in installing the multiple set of bent-up bars, the less opportunity to have sufficient number of bent-up bars due to small number of flexural reinforcement provided at the mid-span of the beams and also the large anchorage required for the horizontal portion of the bars beyond the upper end of the bend could be the reasons behind this. This paper presents the results of tests on five rectangular reinforced concrete beams in which the effectiveness of welded inclined bars (WIB) as shear reinforcement was studied. Two of the beams were controlled specimens, with no shear reinforcement in one, and full design vertical links in another. The other three beams were provided with three different quantities of WIB, measured in terms of area to distance ratio, Asw / S as shear reinforcement in the shear spans. All beams were tested to failure under two point loads with a shear span to effective depth ratio of 2.34, which would ensure that the failure was due to shear unless their shear capacities were larger than the flexural capacity. The performances of the beams were measured in terms of deflection, crack formation, strains in WIB and on the concrete surfaces in the shear region, ultimate loads and failure modes. The results show that WIB alone is capable of carrying the whole shear forces in the beam, and larger shear capacities are achieved with a larger quantity of WIB, and a higher grade of the bars used. The beam with WIB requires 22% less in the quantity of Asw / S compared to that with vertical links to achieve the same shear resistance. These suggest that WIB can be used as an effective system of shear reinforcement in beams.