Tension Stiffening in Lightly Reinforced Concrete Slabs

The tensile capacity of concrete is usually neglected when calculating the strength of a reinforced concrete beam or slab, even though concrete continues to carry tensile stress between the cracks due to the transfer of forces from the tensile reinforcement to the concrete through bond. This contribution of the tensile concrete is known as tension stiffening and it affects the member’s stiffness after cracking and hence the deflection of the member and the width of the cracks under service loads. For lightly reinforced members, such as floor slabs, the flexural stiffness of a fully cracked section is many times smaller than that of an uncracked section, and tension stiffening contributes greatly to the postcracking stiffness. In this paper, the approaches to account for tension stiffening in the ACI, European, and British codes are evaluated critically and predictions are compared with experimental observations. Finally, recommendations are included for modeling tension stiffening in the design of reinforced concrete floor slabs for deflection control.