Abstract
The AIJ "Design Guideline for Earthquake Resistant Reinforced Concrete Buildings Based on Inelastic Displacement Concept" requires that the shear carried by arch action shall be ignored in the reinforced concrete beams with openings. The validity of this requirement, however, has not been verified yet. In this paper, 12 reinforced concrete short beams with web openings were loaded monotonically, in order to investigate the arch mechanism in the solid portions. The test variables were the size and location of the openings, bond performance of longitudinal reinforcement (i.e. bond or no bond) and the shear span. The conclusions obtained from this investigation were as follows. 1) The shear carried by arch action existed in the test beams having axial reinforcement with no bond. 2) The ultimate strength of the test beams was given by the smaller between the ultimate strength in the solid portion and the one in the openings.
