Confinement effect of geo-grid and conventional shear reinforcement bars subjected to corrosion

An experimental study was performed to examine the effect of geo-grid as a confinement for both corroded and non-corroded reinforced concrete beams. The main aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of geo-grid on bond-slip relationships, flexure strength, load-deflection and crack patterns for non-corroded and corroded reinforced concrete beams. For each parameter, geo-grid confining technique was compared with conventional confining technique used in the case of non-corroded and corroded reinforced concrete beams. The experimental program consisted of testing ten reinforced concrete beams for two different confinement techniques used with different levels of corrosion. Test specimens subjected to accelerated corrosion method to corrode the reinforcement bars. For doing this a full scaled of an accelerated corrosion pool was constructed. At the second stage of the study; different than confinement techniques provided by geo-grid, the contribution of the total achieved amount of corrosion levels from shear and longitudinal reinforcement bars of conventional designed reinforced concrete beams on the structural behavior was aimed to be discussed. All reinforced concrete beams were crushed after loading to calculate the actual corrosion levels at shear and longitudinal reinforcement bars by extracting the reinforcement bars from concrete. Obtained results indicated that the performance of the geo-grid materials was very low compared to conventional used reinforcement bars even at the stage of corrosion. It has been found that the suggestion of using geo-grid as an alternative material as a confinement material in the available literature was limited with the limited bending capacities of tested specimens due to scaled specimens and comparisons of geo-grid which was made based on plain concrete.