COMPARISON OF DRAFT NEW MODEL CODE SHEAR PROVISIONS TO EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

In 2011 the fib has published the first draft of the New Model Code. This document follows on from the heritage of the well-known 1978 CEB-FIP model code and the later 1990 CEB-FIP model code. This new version will be called the 2010-FIB model code, currently known as the New Model Code (NMC). The first draft of this document was published in fib bulletins number 55 and 56 in the spring of 2010. The New Model Code contains a number of new ideas including a significant change to the shear provisions. This paper briefly explains these changes. The biggest change to these shear provisions is the inclusion of a "Level of Approximation" concept. Thus the same basic equations are used with different parameters that depend on the level of Approximation. The lowest Level of Approximation (level I) provides the least accurate results, but also the quickest to calculate. The highest level of Approximation (level III) provides the most accurate results, but at the cost of the most arithmetic. A Level of Approximation IV is also defined in the draft NMC to allow engineers to use nonlinear finite element analyses for cases that justify this additional effort. This paper provides a very short summary of a 16 page paper in fib Bulletin 57 that explicitly compares the one-way shear provisions of the NMC. (Bentz, 2010)