Behaviour of reinforced concrete deep beams in previous studies

This paper is a comprehensive study of the reinforced concrete simple deep beams based on previous experimental and theoretical studies. Forevermore, it is a review of the methods of analysis that recommended by ACI code or suggested by some researchers. The main parameters that were taken into considerations were: shear span to effective depth ratio (a/d), amount of flexural reinforcement (rho), web shear reinforcement (rho(h) and rho(v)), steel fiber volumetric ratio (V-f), compressive strength of used concrete (f'c), existence of openings with different shapes and sizes in addition to strengthening them. Researchers found that increasing a/d ratio about 50-67% leads to decrease deep beam ultimate capacity by about 17-23%, respectively. Increasing rho leads to decrease ductility. Increasing rho(h) and rho(v) or both, increases capacity by different ratios. Removing only rho(v) leads to a decrease in ultimate capacity by about 19%, removing only rho(h) leads to a decrease in ultimate capacity by about 10%, while removing both, leads to about 31% reduction in ultimate capacity. Using V-f = 0.4% causes increasing in cracking and ultimate capacity by about 33% and 11%, respectively, while using V-f = 0.8% causes increasing in cracking and ultimate capacity by about 64% and 33%, respectively. Increasing f'c about 50% leads to increase the ultimate capacity by about 39-52%. It was also found that opening existence decreases the ultimate capacity especially when they lie in the strut paths, more specifically, they decrease ultimate capacity by about 3-69%, while strengthening them by steel plates leads to increase ultimate capacity by about 9-27%.