Reinforced concrete deep beams are safety critical members that carry heavy loads over short spans (ACI Committee 318, 2008). Design provisions in many codes can under or overestimate their shear strength, which introduces reliability concerns in practice (Kong JSCE, 2005). Web reinforcement patterns were either congested, with vertical stirrups at 50 mm, or normal, with vertical stirrups at 100 mm. Key responses recorded include load deflection, diagonal cracking load, crack patterns, and ultimate load. Results show that self-compacting concrete with normal web reinforcement produced slightly higher diagonal cracking at ultimate capacities, while both concretes reached similar capacities under congested web reinforcement (Okamura Choi, Kim, Akinpelu & Adedeji, 2018). All beams failed by sudden shear compression after diagonal crack band formation. Findings endorse self-compacting concrete for deep beams where congestion and compaction challenges exist.
Olusegun T. Afolabi (Wed,) studied this question.