Strength and ductility of concrete columns reinforced with welded wire fabric and/or rebars.

Research was carried out to investigate the characteristics of concrete confined by welded wire fabric. The column reinforcement consisted of only welded wire fabric, without the use of any reinforcing bars. The increase in confinement was relatively small. The ductility enhancement was also limited. It was concluded that, unless special size welded wire fabric was used to have adequate percentage of steel, the standard size mesh was not suitable for use as column reinforcement. The test results were compared against analytical predictions obtained from the use of Saatcioglu and Razvi model for confined concrete. Having established the validity of the model, a parametric study was carried out to establish the significance of confinement parameters for columns reinforced with welded wire fabric, reinforcing bars, and a combination of the two. It was found that the combined use of reinforcing bars and welded wire fabric offered the optimum solution, where the bars formed the main reinforcement, and the mesh provided superior concrete confinement. (Abstract shortened by UMI.