Experimental Study on Calculation Methods for Short-term Cracks in High-strength Reinforced Concrete Beams

Abstract: High-strength steel has increasingly become widely used among various engineering practices, but the relevant provisions of the codes lag behind its development. Six sets of experiments on simple supported beams reinforced with HTB600 and HTB700 rebars subject to bending loading were conducted in this study to 1) investigate the conditions of crack development, 2) contrast the calculating modes of short-term crack width between Chinese and European concrete codes, and 3) analyze European applicability and precision pertaining to high-strength reinforcement of beams. According to the experiments and research, when the calculation formulae obtained from Chinese codes were used to calculate the average crack spacing of high-strength reinforced concrete beams, the error relative to that obtained in the experiment reached approximately 20%. Based on this, a revised formula for the calculation of average crack spacing is proposed in this article, and the results of these calculations align with the results obtained from the experiment. In addition, this study also demonstrates that the maximum cracking spacing calculated by adhering to Eurocode standards yielded no significant deviation as compared to the experimental results. However, owing to a difference in the crack width exceeding 20% being observed between the results obtained under Eurocode standards and the experimental results, the calculation methods need to be further improved for better applicability of high-strength reinforced rebars.