DUCTILITY AND FAILURE OF NET-REINFORCED CONCRETE SHEEL WALLS.

The problem of reinforced concrete has not yet become fully understood, even though semi-empirical design approaches exist for various special situations. The need for more realistic and accurate prediction of the behaviour of the walls of nuclear reactor containments and vessels has recently led to intensified interest. To establish the safety margins of limit analysis and to determine stress-deformation relations of cracked, net-reinforced concrete it is necessary to take into consideration the phenomenon of aggregate interlock (Rough Crack Approach), which basically involves the relative displacements between the two faces of the crack, and their relations with the stresses transmitted across the crack. In this paper the relations among crack slip, crack opening (crack width), shear and normal stresses across the crack have been worked out starting from the results of experiments.