A load capacity of cyclic loaded reinforced concrete beams

In this paper, an effect of cyclic and variable loads on the capacity of reinforced concrete beams is investigated. The study was conducted on 28 reinforced concrete beams including 12 two-span beams - statically indeterminate and 16 simply supported single-span beams. Those beams were differentiated by the structure and degree of longitudinal reinforcement (two degrees of reinforcement) and load applied programs (three programs types) including the monotonic load, load with unloadings and cyclic load. The last one was taken as a sinusoidal cyclic load with 100,000 cycles carried out for three ranges of loading forces. On the basis of a comparative analysis it can be concluded that in the case of the two-span beams, the imposition of 252,000 load cycles results in 20% drop of the beam capacity. Such an effect is not observed for load with unloadings and in the case of simply supported beams.