Reliability of Shear-Critical Reinforced Concrete Members

Abstract

Recent research on one-way shear strength and strut-and-tie design approach has led to updates in the ACI 318 Building code requirements for structural concrete. The changes in one-way shear design provisions in ACI 318-19 are significant enough to suspect that a new reliability-based calibration is warranted. For the case of strut-and-tie design procedure, a reliability-based calibration had never been done. This dissertation is divided into three manuscripts connected by two broad topics: shear strength of concrete members and reliability of structures. Available databases and published literature were reviewed and used to quantify uncertainties in material properties, member dimensions, and analysis methods. Statistical tools were used to investigate the accuracy of recently published methods for one-way shear strength, as well as the accuracy of the strut-and-tie modeling approach. Reliability analysis was extensively applied to study the safety margins of concrete members and to calibrate strength reduction factors for available design procedures. The findings of the work presented in this dissertation are expected to be useful for reinforced concrete designers and for code developers.