Using intelligent system approach for shear strength forecasting of steel fiber-reinforced concrete beams

Abstract

Previous studies have shown that brittle failure in reinforced concrete buildings caused huge losses, both in human and economic terms. The appropriate use of steel fibers to a reinforced concrete beam can change the brittle behavior to a ductile behavior and significantly increase the ductility ratio. The aim of this study is to develop an intelligent system approach for shear strength estimation of steel fiber-reinforced concrete (SFRC) beams without transversal reinforcement using a large number of existing experimental results. The main parameters in this investigation are the steel fiber-volume fraction, the aspect ratio and volume of fiber, compressive strength of concrete, longitudinal reinforcement, effective depth and shear span of beams. The precision of the proposed approach is compared with other existing models for estimating the shear capacity of SFRC beams based on experimental results which showed a reasonable agreement.