Experimental study of reinforced concrete beams with elliptical opening under flexural loading

The existing of openings in the structural elements of concrete may be useful in some cases and necessary at other cases. Experimental study on Reinforced Concrete (RC) beams was address in this research to examine the conduct of the opening in RC beams. The target of this study is to evaluate the impact of web elliptical openings in reinforced concrete beams experimentally. Under two-point top loading, four reinforced beams were tested, three of them with openings and one without opening. Test variable included the number of elliptical openings. Test results indicated that incase of the number of opening increased the ultimate load decreased. The ultimate load of CBEH1, CBEH2 and CBEH3 beams are decreased by 12%, 24% and 28% respectively compared with the ultimate load of CB beam.