International Journal of Applied Engineering Research ISSN 0973-4562 Volume 12, Number 19 (2017) pp. 8681-8688 © Research India Publications. http://www.ripublication.com 8681 Behavior of Reinforcement Concrete Beams Using Steel Strips as a Shear Reinforcements Haider K. Ammash PhD in Structural Engineering, University of Al-Qadisiyah, Iraq. Orcid ID: 0000-0003-3672-6295 Abstract An experimental and theoretical study on reinforced concrete beams using steel strip plates as a shear reinforcement instead of stirrups bars is presented in this paper. Five specimens with same dimensions and properties were used in this study. One of them has regular ties as shear reinforcements and is used as a reference beam. Other specimens used steel plates as shear reinforcements with an equivalent area of the regular ties of the reference beam. Four thicknesses of plates were used, 1mm 2mm, 3mm, and 4mm. The experimental results showed a good agreement in term of the ultimate load within the range of 99.86 – 113.33 % of the ultimate load of the reference beam. The steel strips work as a regular tie to control the cracks (number and width). The analytical result showed that there is a good agreement between the numerical results and the experimental results in the term. Keywords: Crack width, Finite element, Reinforced concrete, Shear reinforcement, Steel plates. INTRODUCTION Reinforced concrete (RC) beams should have acceptable shear reinforcement to prevent sudden and brittle failure after formation of the diagonal cracks, and also to keep the crack width within the acceptable level (Daou & Ghanem, 2003). Surviving RC beams with shear deficiencies ultimately need strengthening. Deficiencies may occur due to different factors such as insufficient shear reinforcement, reduction in steel area due to corrosion, increased service load, and design defects (Khalifa, Tumialan, Nanni, & Belarb, 1999). The purpose of shear reinforcement is to prevent failure in shear, and to increase beam ductility and subsequently, the likelihood of sudden failure will be reduced. The type of shear reinforcements on RC beams has been studied by many researchers. (Abdul Hamid, 2005) showed experimentally that the use of additional horizontal and independent bent- up bars increased the RC beam resistance against shear forces compared to conventional shear reinforcement system. (Al-Nasra & Asha, 2013) investigated four different types of shear reinforcement that can be used in RC beams; traditional stirrups, welded swimmer bars, bolted swimmer bars, and u-link bolted swimmer bars. A swimmer bar is a small inclined bar with its both ends bent horizontally for a short distance. Their results showed an improvement in shear strength of RC beams by using swimmer bars in general. (Aziz & Yaseen, 2013) investigated the effect of type and position of stirrups of high-strength RC deep beams on the ultimate shear capacity. Three types of shear reinforcements were used; vertical stirrups, horizontal stirrups, and inclined stirrups. The results indicated that ductility and ultimate load capacity were improved by using vertical with horizontal stirrups and vertical with inclined stirrups. (Sinaei, Shariati, Abna, Aghaei, & Shariati, 2012) used ABAQUS program to model the behavior of reinforced concrete (RC) beams. In the finite element model, they used concrete damaged plasticity approach where this model can help to confirm the theoretical calculations as well as to provide a valuable supplement to the laboratory investigations of behavior. For validation, a reinforced concrete beam was modeled that had been experimentally tested and reported in previous experimental research. This is followed by a comparison of the finite element with the experimental results for the RC beam element. Their study was compared the numerical results with experimental data for the reinforced concrete beam subjected to flexural loading. The results indicate that the displacement, tensile strain for the main reinforcement, compressive strain for concrete and crack patterns obtained from the finite element model (FEM) were well matched with the experimental results. (Sihua, Ze, & Li, 2015) used the nonlinear analysis of a reinforced concrete beam was based on the finite element analysis software ABAQUS. Plasticity model of concrete damage was employed for simply supported reinforced concrete beam analysis. Their results of the experimentation and the ABAQUS analysis were compared in a diagram, accordingly, reasons of the result difference between the two methods were discussed, which can be a useful reference for the further study of the nonlinear analysis of reinforced concrete. (Tejaswini & Rama Raju, 2015) presented a study to compare experimental results with the ABAQUS results. Initially, they investigated laboratory tests on a beam of 1200 × 200 ×100 mm of M30 grade concrete for plain, under, balanced, over reinforced sections. Finite Element Analysis (FEA) had also been performed using ABAQUS for the model geometry considered in the experimental study. Their numerical results from the FEA were compared with the experimental results which showed that good agreement between the results.