Influence of Transverse Reinforcing Bar Spacing on Flexural Crack Spacing on Reinforced Concrete

The cracking behavior of reinforced concrete (RC) members, including beam and slabs, is an important issue in the design for the serviceability limit state. It also has significant effect concerning the nonlinear behavior. This paper deals with the influence of transverse reinforcement spacing on the cracking behavior. 18 RC slab-strips were tested to study the flexural crack spacing in the uniaxial pure bending with the presence of T-reinforcement. Three concretes types, i.e., normal, high-strength and light-weight concrete were used to qualitatively study the effects of concrete properties. In addition, the T-reinforcement spacing was considered as a parameter. Based on the test data, a concept equation for estimating the inducted cracks by steel bar was proposed. Subsequently, the inducted cracks were accounted and compared. These results indicate that the spacing of T-reinforcement has different influences for different types of concrete. The measured average crack spacing was compared with values predicted by DIN1045. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.