Assessment of one-way shear design of RC elements subjected to axial tension

The Shear failure of reinforced concrete is brittle with no warning. In addition, tensile forces could widen the concrete cracking and cause premature failure. Thus, worsen the situation, which could have disastrous consequences in many cases as shown in Fig. 1a. There is a lack of agreement between various design code provisions for the case of one-way shear combined tensile forces. A total of 897 concrete elements tested under one-way shear was compiled, which contain 113 elements tested under one-way shear and tension. A review of recent findings and the provisions of current design codes for concrete subjected to one-way shear and tensile forces. In addition, a comparative study was conducted on the strength calculated using design codes. Moreover, the effect of various parameters including but not limited to the tensile axial force, the size, the flexure reinforcement ratio, the concrete strength, and the shear span to depth ratio on the design using selected design codes were examined. Last but not least, concluding remarks were outlined, which could help further the development of current design codes. In particular, design codes that are based on physically sound models were found to be more accurate for shear design with or without tension compared to other design codes. However, there is room for improvement in terms of consistency and accounting for various effective parameters.