Anti-plane shear strength of plain concrete

Abstract Concrete shear strength is an important property in research and structural design, playing a key role in the evaluation of failure models used in computational mechanics of concrete and structural analysis. Nonetheless, no standardized procedure to evaluate concrete shear strength exists. This article proposes a procedure that uses concrete cylinders with circular notches to evaluate plain concrete anti-plane shear. Experiments were conducted with a new apparatus, previously used to test concrete helical tensile strength, that can be used with any universal testing machine. Results indicate that concrete anti-plane shear strength is higher than direct shear strength measured with notched beams and approximately two times concrete tensile strength. The method utilizes concrete cylindrical specimens commonly used to evaluate concrete compressive strength and splitting tensile strength and can be adopted as a standardized procedure to measure concrete shear strength.