The shear strength of a reinforced concrete beam remains an issue of great interest in structural engineering. In addition, it is well known that the mechanical performance of real structure needs to take into account the phenomenon of “size effect”.…
The shear strength of a reinforced concrete beam remains an issue of great interest in structural engineering. In addition, it is well known that the mechanical performance of real structure needs to take into account the phenomenon of “size effect”. In this research, an experimental work was conducted to study the size effect and behavior of the critical shear crack in reinforced concrete beams without transverses reinforcement. In order to get these objectives, three points bending tests were performed on geometrically similar beams, with identical width of the cross section and varying effective height. The percentage of flexural reinforcement was set constant. DIC technique was used to monitor the crack width of diagonal shear crack, the crack profile and propagation during the failure process. By applying the DIC technique, a non-linear evolution of the crack width was observed for the three specimens.