Shear capacity of reinforced concrete one‐way slabs with intermediate support and distributed loading

Experimental campaigns on reinforced concrete members, being the basis for database evaluations used for validation of many shear design approaches, mostly include simply supported single‐span beams with concentrated loads. Other support and loading conditions representative for actual slab systems are highly underrepresented. Experimental investigations on continuous slabs without shear reinforcement under distributed loading have shown a positive influence on shear capacity not described satisfactorily with current shear design approaches, for example, Eurocode 2. In this paper, an experimental campaign including 10 large‐scale tests on one‐way slabs with distributed load (DL) and varying degrees of rotational restraint is presented. The shear capacities are compared to current shear design codes. The influence of shear slenderness is much less pronounced for the second generation of Eurocode 2 compared to Model Code 2020. Further improvements in considering the beneficial effects of direct load transfer for DL are necessary, especially for members with intermediate support and partial clamping.