Shear Strength of Concrete Wall

[carnahanad]

Hello,

I'm currently reviewing some calculations on a retaining wall. The engineer is checking V_u against (0.5 * Φ * V_c). They are basically using this to say that they don't need shear reinforcement. I always thought that this only applied to concrete beams. For walls and slabs, I just check V_u against (Φ * V_c) to make sure I don't need shear reinforcement. With the other engineers approach, you either end up with some weird stirrups or really thick retaining walls.

Let me know what you guys think.

 

[asixth]

For thin elements like slabs or retaining walls you don't need shear reinforcement if the shear is less than phi*Vc.

 

[steellion]

It would be unusual to have shear reinforcement in a retaining wall. Usually the wall is just designed to be adequately thick to work without shear reinforcement.

 

[UcfSE]

ACI 318-11. 11.9.1 states shear out of plane for walls is to be per slabs in 11.11. 11.4.6.1 states the exception to the 0.5φV_c rule for slabs, which I would extend to apply to walls based on 11.9.1.

 

[TXStructural]

The base and wall both act as beams.

The CRSI Design Handbook uses Vc=phi*2*sqrt(f'c)*12*d, which is compared to factored Vu.

 

[carnahanad]

Thanks for the discussion on this. I'm going to talk with the original engineer about not using the (1/2) check.