Keywords: membrane, reinforced concrete, shear strength, failure, design method, ductility.

This paper presents a simple methodology to design reinforced concrete membrane elements with orthogonal reinforcement. The method takes into account any combination of in-plane design stresses. This design method is based on a simplified model previously developed by the authors that takes the condition of the concrete at failure into account. The design methodology is non-iterative, simple and easy to use for practical purposes. The proposed design method considers the main modes of failure that a reinforced concrete membrane element usually develops, such as crushing of concrete struts with diagonal cracking, or crushing of concrete under a biaxial compression stress state. A group of design regions is set depending on the design stresses, and in each one a design condition based on the assumption of minimum reinforcement is taken into account. Moreover, it is intended to provide ductility to the reinforced concrete membrane element. The particular design procedure in each region is presented in this paper. The model in which is based this design method enables the evaluation of the average stresses at failure. Thus, it can be easily visualized that the average stresses are resisted by concrete as well as in both reinforcement directions. The design method proposed is numerically validated by means of the MCFT material model through the use of the program Membrane-2000.

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