Failure from fatigue is often sudden and has serious consequences. Use of finite element (FE) analysis facilitates to simulate the behaviour of members with sufficient accuracy in lesser time and cost than that required to perform an experimental investigation for fatigue testing. In this study, numerical simulations of fatigue behavior of shear deficient reinforced concrete (RC) beams are carried out. FE models are validated using the experimental results under monotonic loading as well as under the fatigue loading. The failure mechanisms and the ultimate load obtained from the numerical simulation under monotonic and fatigue loading are found to be well correlated with those obtained from the experimental observations. The validated control and shear deficient FE models are used for the simulation under fatigue loading by varying upper load range of 65, 75 and 85% of ultimate load, whereas the lower load range is kept constant as 20% of the ultimate load. The study helps to bring out the methodology to simulate the fatigue characteristics of reinforced concrete beams and to develop S-N curve for reinforced concrete structures.

Keywords: Shear deficient, Load range, Monotonic load, Fatigue load, Numerical simulation.