Bond Stresses between Reinforcing Bar and Reactive Powder Concrete

A good performance of reinforced concrete structures is ensured by the bond between steel and concrete, which makes the materials work together, forming a part of solidarity. The behavior of the bond between the reinforcing bar and the surrounding concrete is significant to evaluate the cracking control in serviceability limit state and load capacity in the ultimate limit state. In this investigation, the bond stresses between reinforcing bar and reactive powder concrete (RPC) was considered to compare it with that of normal strength concrete (NSC). The push-out test with short embedment length is considered in this study to evaluate the bond strength, bond stress-slip relationship, and bond stress-crack width relationship for reactive powder concrete members. The compressive strength of concrete, the nominal diameter of reinforcement, concrete cover, and amount of steel fibers and embedded length of reinforcement were considered as variables in this study. The test results show that the ultimate bond stress increased with increasing of the compressive strength of concrete, decreasing the nominal diameter of the reinforcing bar, increasing the concrete cover and increasing steel fiber content. In a bond stress-slip relationship, the NSC specimen shows a very short softening zone after reaching the peak point in comparisons with RPC specimen. In RPC, bond stress-slip relationship shows stiffer behavior when the steel fiber content was increased. RPC shows stepper softening zone due to the presence of steel fiber, and the absence of steel fiber cause push-out failure without descending part after peak point. Using NSC instead of RPC in anchorage between reinforcement and concrete, decrease the crack width produced due to radial tensile stresses through the push-out of reinforcing bar. In RPC, the absence of steel fiber, decrease the nominal diameter of the reinforcing bar, increase the concrete cover, decrease the embedded length of reinforcing bar cause push-out failure and vice versa cause splitting failure.