Experimental and numerical investigation of bond in self-compacting concrete

The primary aim of this study is to investigate the bond of lap-spliced reinforcing bars in full scale beams produced from normal and self-compacting concrete (SCC) as experimentally and numerically. In this study, twelve beams, which have 200*300*2000 mm dimensions, are subjected to four points bending and tested. To compare with the experimental results, beam speciments are analyzed for bond of reinforcement using finite element ANSYS programme. Each beam was designed to include two bars in tension, spliced at the center of the span. The splice length was selected so that bars would fail in bond, splitting the concrete cover in the splice region, before reaching the yield point. During experiments, reinforcing bar diameters (F16 ve F20) are the variables while dimensions of beam, and ratio of water to (cement and cement+silica fume) are constant. As a conclusion, from numerical solution and experimental tests, it is seen that bond of reinforcment decreases while diameter of bars increases, especially this is more obvious in numerical solution. Comparing bond stress measured numerically and experimentally with the methods developed by Orangun et al.(1977) and Esfahani and Rangan (1998), both equations provides a better estimate of bond strength obtained from numerical solution than that of experimental tests. Key Words: Finite element method (ANSYS), bond between reinforcement and concrete, self-compacting concrete, full-scale beam, bending, lap-splice.