Application of Plastic Methods to Reinforced Concrete Structures

At first glance concrete structures bear little resemblance to steel ones. Unexpectedly, reinforced concrete (RC) beams do, in certain circumstances, act similarly to steel beams, because of the characteristics of the steel reinforcement which control the behaviour of the beam. The maximum BM that a section can carry, usually called the moment of resistance of the section, is calculated in a similar way to the plastic moment of a steel beam. Many tests on RC beams have shown that the calculated moment of resistance is very close to the experimental value, confirming the applicability of the theory. Section 7.2 looks in some detail at the analysis of reinforced concrete sections carrying BMs only.