The ESIS-Technical Committee 9 on Concrete was established in 1990 and has met seven times. A proposal was put to European and extra-European laboratories entitled "Scale effects and transitional failure phenomena of reinforced concrete beams in flexure" which lead to several positive responses.

The central topic discussed by the committee was that of the minimum reinforcement in concrete members. The minimum amount of reinforcement is defined as that for which "peak load at first concrete cracking" and "ultimate load after steel yielding" are equal. In this way, any brittle behaviour...