Experimental Studies on the Shear Strength of Large Reinforced Concrete Beams Under Uniformly Distributed Load

In the past, scale effect on the shear strength of reinforced concrete beams has been studied by some researchers, and it is found that the nominal shear strength Vc/bd, of beams without shear reinforcement decreases as the effective depth of the member increases. However, the effective depth in the previous studies was limited only to 110cm. In order to investigate the scale effect for larger-size reinforced concrete members, this study was undertaken on members with six different depths ranging from 10 to 300cm, all with constant b/d ratio, under uniformly distributed loads. The result reveals that the scale effect exists even for members deeper than 100cm and the nominal shear strength is inversely proportional to the fourth root of the effective depth.