Time effects on deflection of reinforced concrete beams with large web opening

Abstract

The objective of the present study is to elucidate the influence of creep and shrinkage on the long-term deflection of reinforced concrete beams that contain a large opening in the web under service sustained loads while also providing practical equations for the design of deflection in reinforced concrete structures predicated on linear creep theory. To achieve this, the simplified equations used in the present EC2, ACI code, and ACI435 are rigorously evaluated and contrasted. In addition, 4RC simply supported reinforced concrete beams (3RC beams with large web opening and 1RC beam without opening) under sustained mid-span load were made and tested, to validate the proposed method. The proposed method, based on a new simplified curvature coefficient, is found simple to use, amenable to programming on compact calculators, and exhibits a high degree of concordance with empirical results, thus, it is concluded that the proposed equations possess a suitable level of practicality for adoption in practice.