FLEXURAL CAPACITY FOR RC BEAMS WITH EXPOSED REINFORCEMENT

Abstract

The currently available approaches on the effects of the exposed reinforcement on the flexural strength capacity of beams by other researchers are critically reviewed. These methods for estimating the flexural- compression strengths of beams with main steel exposed along all or part of the span do not give good predictions for the ordinary reinforced member. In this paper, the simple shear-compression theory introduced in earlier study is modified to the treatment of unbonded beams and a very simplistic empirical equation is proposed. The accuracy of the proposed equation is examined by comparing with results of 44 beams from literature. The comparison showed that the predictions by the proposed equation are between 0.85-1.25 to those of test results. The ratio of the experimental ultimate moments to the calculated ultimate moments by the proposed equation gives an average of 1.06 and C.O.V=0.21. The method of calculation proposed here is relatively successful in predicting the ultimate moment resistances but not in predictions of the physical behavior of the beams with exposed reinforcements.