ABSTRACT
Normally, stress in crack planes that cross reinforcing bar is computed with respect to pull-out slip along the axis of the bars only and the transverse displacement normal to the bar axis is not taken into account in computing axial stress-pull-out relations. This makes the bar stress computation easy but limits the applicability of the model (Chapter 8). Mishima et al. [1] carefully examined this assumption and clarified, through their experimental verifications, that this method is applicable to RC cracks with a reinforcement ratio not greater than 2%. For cases with a higher reinforcement ratio or smoother crack plane, however, it was found that this simple superposition leads to an overestimation of shear capacity and stiffness of the RC crack [2]. For these cases, the confinement induced by bar elongation was substantially reduced owing to coupled displacement paths consisting of transverse displacements and axial pull-out [2, 3].
