Influence of Minimum Tension Steel Reinforcement on the Behavior of Singly Reinforced Concrete Beams in Flexure

The requirements of minimum flexural reinforcement in the last decades have been a reason for controversy. The structural behavior of beams in bending is the best way of investigating and evaluating the minimum reinforcement in flexure. For this purpose, twelve singly reinforced concrete beams with a rectangular cross-section of (125 mm) width by (250 mm) height and (1800 mm) length were cast and tested under two-point loads up to failure. These beams were divided into three groups with different compressive strengths (25, 50, and 80 MPa). Each group consists of four beams with different amounts of tension steel reinforcement approximately equal to (0% Asmin, 50% Asmin, 100% Asmin and 150% Asmin), two bar diameters (Ø6 mm and Ø8 mm) were used as the longitudinal tension reinforcement with different yield and ultimate strengths, the minimum amount of reinforcement required is calculated based on ACI 318M-2014 code. The results show that for the reinforced concrete beams, the flexural reinforcement in NSC beams increases the first cracking load and the increment increased with an increasing amount of reinforcement, while for HSC beams the increasing in first cracking load are very little when the quantity of reinforcement less than the minimum flexural reinforcement and increased with the increasing amount above the minimum flexural reinforcement. The equation of ACI 318M-14 code gives adequate minimum flexural reinforcement for NSC and overestimate value for HSC up to (83 MPa), A new formula is proposed for HSC rectangular beams up to (90 MPa) concrete compressive strength by reducing the equation of ACI 318M-14 code for minimum flexural reinforcement by a factor depending on concrete compressive strength.