Flexural Behaviour of Self-Compacted Concrete Perforated Laced Reinforced Beams under Monotonic Loads

Studying the flexural behaviour of self-compacted perforated beams reinforced by laced rebar instead of stirrups is the aim of this work. The research work focused on the effect of replacing stirrups in perforated beams with lacing reinforcement at 45° angles. The void ratio of the beams studied were (3.6, 8, and 14.2) %. Four beams have been cast for this purpose having the dimensions of (150×220×1500) mm, one solid beam without perforation was considered as a reference beam, the other three beams each has 6 voids of (50, 75 and 100) mm in diameter. Lacing bars were used as shear reinforcement instead of traditional stirrups in all specimens. All the beams were tested under two-point bending loads up to failure. The experimental results revealed that the ultimate strength of the 100 mm voided beams was reduced by about 24.3 %, while the ultimate deflection was decreased by about 34%, with respect to the reference solid beam. Furthermore, for the other perforated beams having 6 voids of (50 and 75) mm the reduction in ultimate loads was nonsignificant compared to the reference beam, but there was an increase in the ultimate deflections of about 12.5 % and 15.7 %, respectively.