Analysis of RC Beams with Shallow-angle Bent-up Bars Using Strut-Tie Models

Recently there has been a renewed research interest to study the optimum design approach in reinforced concrete. The primary intention of the research is to re-evaluate on whether are there any other designs that could provide a different and better load carrying mechanism than the current conventional reinforcement. As a result, shallow-angle bent-up bars were introduced. This paper presented experimental and analytical works carried out on shallow-angle bent-up bars. The outcome from this study had shown some very promising results. It had shown that shallow-angle bent-up bars gave satisfactory performance in term of strength and deformation compared with standard reinforcement. For analysis wise, strut-and-tie models were used as an analytical tool to assess the internal forces and the failure behaviour. It had shown that it gave accurate prediction on the internal stress distributions even for unconventional design like shallow-angle bent-up bars.