Experimental and Numerical Study on Flexural Behaviour of Deep Beam with Rectangular Openings Under Static Loading

The behaviour of a fibre-reinforced concrete deep beam with and without an opening under two-point loading is presented in this study. A total of twelve deep beams with dimensions of 700 × 350 × 150 mm were cast, three of which are traditional deep beams and other deep beams with different combinations like 30% replacement of cement with flyash, with flyash in addition with fibre, with flyash and fibre and rectangle opening of size 60 × 40 mm. Two rectangular openings, one each in the shear span of the beam were placed symmetrically at a distance of 145 mm from soffit of the beam to the centre of opening. From the experimental test results, it was observed that the addition of fibre leads to significant increase in failure load. It is also noticed that the opening disrupts the crack pattern by deviating the natural load path of the crack, which helps to increase the load bearing capacity of the beam with ultimate load of about 485 kN. The study also extends to determine the behaviour of deep beam by numerical analysis using ANSYS Program. The crack patterns of the beam were examined, and the patterns were very near to the analytical results obtained in ANSYS.