Abstract

An experimental investigation was conducted to study the influence of pouring techniques and mixture’s fresh properties on the shear strength, cracking behavior and mid-span deflection of large-scale Self-Consolidating Concrete (SCC) beams. SCC beams were poured in two different techniques: the first technique was to pour the concrete from one side of the formwork only, while the second technique was to move the pouring point along the full beam length. The variables were: the concrete type, length and depth of beams, and the viscosity and yield stress of SCC mixture. The study also included a comparison between the experimental shear strength results and the predictions of some major code-based equations. The results obtained from this investigation proved that different pouring techniques, viscosity and/or yield stress of SCC mixtures did not have a significant effect on the structural performance of SCC beams. However, beams cast with lower yield stress appeared to have slightly higher shear strength and minimum average crack heights. Also, SCC beams with higher viscosity mixture tended to have lower stiffness compared to SCC mixtures with normal viscosity mixture.

Key words: Self-consolidating concrete, pouring techniques, shear strength, structural performance, code-based analysis, cracking, load-deformation response.