This study presents an experimental investigation performed to investigate the using of steel fiber reinforced concrete (SFRC) as an alternative to negative reinforcement in continuous RC thin slab panels. More rational way has been used by replacing negative reinforcement near interior supports by steel fiber reinforced concrete (SFRC). Tests were carried out on four slab panels, simply supported under single point loading. One of which were made fully with NSC, and the others were made partially with SFRC in negative moment zone. Experimental results show that the ultimate load capacity are increased (23% -58%) and the cracking loads are increased (25% -62.5%) for tested specimens strengthened with SFRC, in comparison with the reference specimens. Crack arrest mechanism of steel fibers limits crack propagation, improves the ultimate and tensile strength. So, more practical technique can be concluded from this study and employed in manufacturing of thin slabs.
Presently development length of tension bars in reinforced concrete beams, in both codes and researches has a very wide range on the influence of major parameters. Namely, the influence of concrete compressive strength f́c affects the development length of beams by varying power values: 1/2, and 1/3. It is well known that the development length of beams is essentially based on empirical or semi empirical formulae. A total of 254 NSC and HSC tested beams available from the literature are studied in this work. These includes 154 beams without transverse reinforcement and 100 with transverse reinforcement and having a different compressive strength ranged from (16.4 – 98) MPa. The best available design method obtained from the literature leads to 43.31% increase in the coefficients of variation COV compared to the proposed design method in this work, which is essentially whose COV of 14.06%.