Experimental study of the torsion of reinforced concrete members

This paper presents the results of an experimental investigation on the behaviour of 56 reinforced concrete beams subjected to pure torsion. The reported results include the behaviour curves, the failure modes and the values of the pre-cracking torsional stiffness, the cracking and ultimate torsional moments and the corresponding twists. The influence of the volume of stirrups, the height to width ratios and the arrangement of longitudinal bars on the torsional behaviour is discussed. In order to describe the entire torsional behaviour of the tested beams, the combination of two different analytical models is used. The prediction of the elastic till the first cracking part is achieved using a smeared crack analysis for plain concrete in torsion, whereas for the description of the post-cracking response the softened truss model is used. A simple modification to the softened truss model to include the effect of confinement is also attempted. Calculated torsional behaviour of the tested beams and 21 beams available in the literature are compared with the experimental ones and a very good agreement is observed.