Winner of the “Prediction contest for strength of four meters deep reinforced concrete slab strip”

Jul 17, 2015

Červenka Consulting is the winner of the contest among 66 participants from several continents.

University of Toronto team headed by Michael Collins and Evan Bentz were engaged at an experiment investigation of a large slab elements. With dimensions of the specimen, 4m deep and 21m span, it is the  largest shear test ever done.

Fig.1: View of the testing setup at the Toronto laboratory (from: Invitation to Prediction Contest, Collins, 2015)

Before testing the data were distributed world wide and more than sixty participants submitted their predictions. 
Vladimir Cervenka and his team predicted the failure loads as shown below.

See video: east beam, west beam.

Considering the uncertainties involved in a brittle type of concrete failure the results are very satisfying. We believe that, more details will provided later based on data compiled and distributed by the project organizers.

This prediction contest is another contribution to the long and steady effort of ATENA team in validation of ATENA software, its theoretical background and especially its constitutive models. In this context, we would like to refer to a good record of Cervenka team in prediction competitions: Winner of “An international competition to predict the response of reinforced concrete panels”, Collins et al.,1982, Toronto. The best strength prediction in “RC Slab Shear Prediction Competition”, ETH Zurich, Jaeger and Marti, 2006.

Fig.2: Crack pattern of 4m deep specimen at failure predicted by ATENA

Fig.3: Localization of strains indicating the shear crack at failure