Preliminary study on the size effect of composite materials subjected to bending

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effect of size or dimension changes of reinforced concrete structures, in terms of structural performance and serviceability limit states. A theoretical and design study was carried out to evaluate the structural performance and serviceability of reinforced concrete structures using the European Code of Practice (EC2) and British Code of Practice (BS8110). The analysis required nine different sizes of reinforced concrete beams, with dimension between 150mm × 250mm and 350mm × 250mm. The study showed that dimension changes significantly affected the load-carrying capacity and deflection of reinforced concrete members; regardless of their depth/width ratio. The analysis results also produced an equation (presented here) to assess the performance of reinforced concrete members, based on the codes of practice.