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If plain steel tying wires are used for reinforcement adjacent to Class F4 and F5 finishes, it poses the problem of rust staining which may impair the appearance of exposed concrete surfaces. The rate of corrosion of plain steel tying wires is similar to normal steel reinforcement.
The corrosion of steel reinforcement inside a concrete structure is undesirable in the following ways:
(i) The presence of rust impairs the bond strength of deformed reinforcement because corrosion occurs at the raised ribs and fills the gap between ribs, thus evening out the original deformed shape. In essence, the bond between concrete and deformed bars originates from the mechanical lock between the raised ribs and concrete. The reduction of mechanical locks by corrosion results in the decline in bond strength with concrete.
The use of links for column design in Britain is very popular. However, in U.S.A. engineers tend to use helical reinforcement instead of normal links because helical reinforcement has the potential advantage of protecting columns/piles against seismic loads.
In BS8110 a modification factor is applied to span/depth ratio to take into account the effect of tension reinforcement. In fact, deflection of concrete structure is affected by the stress and the amount of tension reinforcement.
To illustrate their relationship, let’s consider the following equation relating to beam curvature:
In some design codes it specifies that the area of longitudinal steel reinforcement should be not less than a certain percentage of the sectional area of column. Firstly, the limitation of steel ratio for columns helps to guard against potential failure in tension. Tension may be induced in columns during the design life of the concrete structures. For instance, tension is induced in columns in case there is uneven settlement of the building foundation, or upper floors above the column are totally unloaded while the floors below the column are severely loaded. Secondly, owing to the effect of creep and shrinkage, there will be a redistribution of loads between concrete and steel reinforcement. Consequently, the steel reinforcement may yield easily in case a lower limit of steel area is not established.
