Comparison of Recent Code Provisions for Punching Shear Capacity of R/C Slabs Without Shear Reinforcement

In the last years the knowledge of the punching failure in R/C slabs increased thanks to several scientific studies. The progress obtained in this field is considerable, nevertheless achieved results are only taken into consideration by few Codes. The most updated code is the Model Code 2010, which adopted the Critical Shear Crack Theory (CSCT) for the punching shear capacity of R/C slab-column connections. At the same time, the EC2 formulation for punching is under revision, but the new formulation will not be available before three-four years. In this paper, the authors discuss main code provisions (ACI, current EC2, two proposals for revision of EC2, MC 2010, old Italian Recommendations) for punching shear capacity of R/C flat slabs without shear reinforcement. Through a parametric analysis, the authors investigate how each code takes into account the influence of main variables, which come into play in the punching phenomenon, on the evaluation of the punching capacity. Finally, results of each code formulation are compared with different literature experimental data.