Nominal flexural strength of high-strength concrete beams

The conventional ACI rectangular stress block is developed on the basis of normal-strength concrete column tests and it is still being used for the design of high-strength concrete members. Many research papers found in the literature indicate that the nominal strength of high-strength concrete members appears to be over-predicted by the ACI rectangular stress block. This is especially true for HSC columns. The general shape of the stress-strain curve of high-strength concrete becomes more likely as a triangle. A triangular stress block is, therefore, introduced in this paper. The proposed stress block is verified using a database which consists of 52 tested singly reinforced high-strength concrete beams having concrete strength above 55 MPa (8,000 psi). In addition, the proposed model is compared with models of various design codes and proposals of researchers found in the literature. The nominal flexural strengths computed using the proposed stress block are in a good agreement with the tested data as well as with that obtained from design codes models and proposals of researchers.