Bond behaviour of flat stainless steel rebars in concrete

In recent years there has been an increasing interest in applying stainless steel (SS) reinforcement in concrete structures to avoid corrosion derived durability problems. Concrete-steel bond behaviour and applicability of existing standards have not yet been extensively studied with respect to SS. Moreover, an interest in applying flat rebars as reinforcement elements has emerged. The idea is based on the optimization of the rebar surface in contact with the concrete as well as on the reinforcement optimization for shallow slabs. To advance in the evaluation of the bond between concrete and flat SS strips and to compare with the behaviour of standard carbon steel (CS) round reinforcement 72 bond tests have been conducted. The test program consists of pull-out tests to centrally reinforced concrete specimens. Traditional concrete and self compacting concrete are used for embedding. For a better analysis and understanding of the failure aspect of the specimens, fluorescent epoxy injection has been conducted. Results are compared to the CEB-FIP 1990 bond model. The authors conclude that, the use of SS instead of CS is not considerably influencing the bond capacity of the reinforcement when ribbed samples are used while parameters as reinforcement shape or rib pattern are more deterministic. An adaptation of the CEB-FIP 1990 bond model is proposed for flat reinforcements tested in this work.