Crack width predictions of concrete beams - New formulas and comparative study

Based on experimental studies, two formulas for the prediction of average and maximum crack widths in concrete beams have been developed. These statistically developed formulas are applicable to both reinforced and prestressed concrete beams. A detailed comparative study on the performance of these proposed formulas has been carried out and reported in this paper. The comparison involves the test results from authors’ 18 reinforced and 12 partially prestressed concrete beams as well as published data on 93 beams from other laboratory investigations. The performance of the proposed formulas is also compared with three published formulas for partially prestressed concrete beams and with those recommended for reinforced concrete beams in the ACI Building Code, the British Standard and the Eurocode. The comparative study indicates that the predictions are accurate and better correlation with test data is achieved by the proposed formulas.