Why Steel Bars Are Used In Concrete?

In building our home or office you take care towards the strength and capacity to exist them for a long period.So we mostly depend on steel bars for powering the concrete slabs and uses.We have seen steel bars and meshes are used in pillars and roofs ,but we never tried to sort out the reasons for using steel in that mixture instead of any other compounds . Let’s discuss the advantages of steel bars to be used in Reinforced Concrete process.

Types of steel used in Concert

There are mainly 4 types of steel reinforcement used in concrete structures:

1. Hot Rolled Deformed Bars: This is the most common type of reinforcement for regular RCC structures. Hot rolling is done in the mills which involves giving it deformations on the surface i.e. ribs so that it can form bond with concrete. The stress — strain curve shows a distinct yield point followed by a plastic stage in which strain increases without increase in stress. This is followed by a strain hardening stage. It has typical tensile yield strength of 60,000 psi.

2.Mild Steel Plain bars: These are plain bars and have no ribs on them. These are used in small projects where economy is the real concern. As plain bars cannot bind very well with concrete hence hooks have to be provided at the ends.Typical tensile yield strength is 40,000 psi.

3.Cold Worked Steel Reinforcement: When hot rolled steel bar undergoes process of cold working, Cold worked reinforcement is produced. Cold working involves twisting or drawing the bars at room temperature. This effectively eliminates the Plastic Stage in the Stress-Strain curve, although it gives more control over the size and tolerances of bars. Due to removal of plastic stage it has lower ductility than Hot Rolled bars. Its use is specific to projects where low tolerances and straightness are a major concern.Typical tensile yield strength is 60,000 psi.

4.Prestressing Steel: Prestressing steel is used in the form of bars or tendons which are made up of multiple strands, however, tendons / strands are more frequently used as these can be laid in various profiles, which is a primary requirement of prestressing steel. Prestressing strands are, in turn, made up of multiple wires (typical 2, 3 or 7 wire strands). Typical seven wire strand consists of six wires spun around the seventh wire which has a slightly larger diameter, thus forming a helical strand. These wires are cold drawn and have very high tensile ultimate strength (typically 250,000–270,000 psi). Their high tensile strength makes it possible to effectively prestress concrete even after undergoing short term and long term losses. These are used in prestressed concrete in bridges or prestressed slabs in buildings.

Advantages of using Steel in concrete structures.

Everyone knows that concrete is good in compression while steel is great in tension. Steel is also good in compression but because it has very high strength, the cross section generally becomes small and the smaller the cross section the more are the chances of buckling, while concrete on the other hand has low strength so we require larger cross sections and in doing so we overcome the buckling effects.

Second reason is the availability of steel and the way we can recycle it. We have huge furnaces which can process and recycle iron and it is available in quite an abundance.Steel companies in UAE have manufacturing of steel products for the construction industries with the various types of concrete steels.Buildings overcome many earthquakes and natural disasters also through the steel strength than concrete brilliance and architecture.