Shear strength prediction for reinforced concrete pile caps

The pile foundation consisting of pile caps and piles transfers the load of the building to the deep hard soil by means of piles that pass through the soft soil layers to ensure structural safety. The design of the reinforced concrete pile caps should provide sufficient thickness to avoid shear failure as well as an appropriate amount of flexural reinforcement to avoid flexural failure. In this study, a simplified analytical method was proposed based on the softened strut-and-tie model to calculate the shear strength of reinforced concrete pile caps. The prediction precision of the proposed analytical method and the section method of the ACI Code are verified by comparing the experimental and analytical values. According to the experimental verification, it is found that both methods can obtain uniform predictions for the shear strength of the reinforced concrete pile caps. However, the section method of the ACI Code may be non-conservative for pile caps with relative low shear span-to-depth ratios.