Failure Load Prediction for Dapped-End Beam

Dapped-end beams are members of precast concrete structures that widely used
nowadays in construction industry, especially in buildings and bridges due to its
good lateral stability. The design analysis of dapped-end connections is complex and
the re-entrant corner is identified as the weakest point because stress concentration
develops in that area, which also known as disturbed regions. The accuracy of
different codes and approaches in predicting failure load is yet to be fully explored.
Therefore, investigation of the relative performance of different methods in
predicting failure load capacity is crucial to be done. Besides, the incident of
collapsed of Concorde Bridge has risen up many researchers’ attention and interest to
conduct deeper research on design and strengthening of dapped-end connections to
determine the load capacity for future design work purposes. Thus, this research
project intended to determine the failure load of the dapped-end beams by using twodimensional
non-linear finite element analysis (FEA) software called Vector2 and
also using PCI design approach. The results from the Vector2 and also from PCI
design approach will be used to compare with the load capacity obtained
experimentally by Wang et al (2005) in their experimental research project as
validation to determine which code or method is providing better accuracy in
determining the failure load capacity. The analysis result obtained from FEA
software and PCI Design Handbook is 47.6kN and 36.7kN, which is quite near
compared to the experimental value, 42.24kN. Parametric study conducted to
determine the sensitivity of different dapped-end parameters on the failure load
capacity. As a conclusion, it is proven that the FEA software can be used to predict
the failure load capacity accurately and can be used for parametric study.