Experimental investigation on the shear performance of prestressed self-compacting concrete beams without stirrups

In this work, eight prestressed reinforced self-compacting concrete (SCC) beams were tested in order to investigate the shear stresses transfer mechanism, the shear failure mode and the shear performance of prestressed SCC beams without stirrups. The principal parameters included concrete compressive strength, longitudinal tensile reinforcement ratio rho (l) and prestressing force. The results indicated that the shear resistance corresponding to the first flexure-shear crack increases with the amount of longitudinal tensile reinforcement and the prestressing force. The ultimate shear resistance V (u) increases with the increase of the concrete compressive strength. V (u) increases also with rho (l) and the prestressing force. The failure mode of the tested beams is similar to a reinforced normal concrete beams without stirrups, namely diagonal compression failure. The diagonal crack location was analyzed in this work and the values obtained are acceptable in comparison with the test data. The shear transfer mechanism can be explained by an arch system. The predictions provided by ACI and Eurocode were compared with those obtained by the experimental test.