Shear database for reinforced concrete members without shear reinforcement

While thousands of experiments have been conducted to assess the shear capacity of structural concrete members, code provisions are usually developed from a limited and somewhat arbitrary subset of these test results. To address this problem, a qualified database of shear test results was created. All beams in this database have a rectangular cross section, do not contain shear reinforcement, and were subjected to point loads. A sanctioned set of criteria was then developed for accepting a test result into an evaluation-level data-base. Examples of these criteria include a minimum compressive strength, a minimum overall height and width, and a check against flexural failure. An examination was then conducted to assess the influence of key parameters on the model safety factor γ_mod = (V_test/ V_code) for ACI 318-99 Eq. (11-3) and (11-6). This revealed that current ACI provisions do not adequately capture many trends and become increasingly unsafe as members become larger and more lightly reinforced.