Predicting Shear Strength of Reinforced Concrete Knee Joints in Closing and Opening Actions

Abstract

The shear capacity of reinforced concrete knee joints in closing and opening actions are determined in this paper using the framework of the softened strut-and-tie model. The proposed model considers the closing and opening actions separately and takes into account the differences in joint behavior to accurately predict the joint capacity in closing and opening actions. The proposed model satisfies force equilibrium, strain compatibility, and the constitutive relationship of the cracked concrete. The predicted shear capacity values in both actions are compared with the experimental results of 59 knee joint specimens reported by various researchers. The gathered dataset consists of specimens with a wide range of geometric and reinforcement variations. The comparison showed an excellent correlation between the predicted shear capacity values and the available experimental results in both closing and opening actions of knee joints.