Strength and Ductility Behaviour of Steel Plate Reinforced Concrete Beams under Flexural Loading

Long-term durability is the main concern in the area of civil engineering due to safety considerations. This paper reports the strength and ductility behaviour of steel plate reinforced concrete beams under four-point bending. A total of three full-scale beams of 200 mm width, 300 mm height and 4000 mm length were cast and tested. All the beams had the same details of stirrups and compression reinforcement. The first beam was reinforced with ordinary reinforcement (2 deformed steel bars with a nominal diameter of 20 mm) and served as a reference beam. The second beam was reinforced with a chequer steel plate and provided with 20 steel bolts welded to the chequer steel plate at a regular distance of 200 mm centre to centre. The third beam was reinforced with a chequer steel plate and provided with 4 steel angles welded at the ends of the steel plate. Each plate reinforced concrete beam was designed to have an equivalent force to the ordinary reinforced concrete beam. The strengths, ductilities and analytical considerations of the beams are covered in this paper. The results showed no significant difference (less than 2%) between the strengths of ordinary and plate reinforced concrete beams. On the other hand, the steel plates significantly increased the ductility. The ductilities of plate reinforced concrete beams provided with steel bolts and angles increased by up to 3.7 and 2.3 times, respectively compared with the ordinary reinforced concrete beam. It was also observed, that the use of steel bolts in the plate reinforced concrete beam, improved the ductility by 43.2% compared to the steel angles.