Shear strength of straight concrete members without shear reinforcement. Reassessment of the effectiveness factors used in the crack sliding theory

Recently it has been shown that the effectiveness factors used in the crack sliding theory are not well suited for predicting the shear strength of beams with large depths. Therefore, formulas for the effective concrete compression strength and the effective tensile strength have been reformulated by changing the size effect factor and adding a term to take into account the maximum aggregate size. Also, the theory has been improved to predict better the shear strength of deep beams and beams with short shear span. This is done by including the effect of the transverse stress. Experimental data for slender beams and deep/short beams with rectangular cross sections have been used for validation of the crack sliding theory. The outcome of this analysis is that the new theory in general are substantially better for predicting shear strength than the old one.