• Manu, Professor Patrick
• Adukpo, E.
• Barrett, P.
• Solomon-Ayeh, K. A.
• Pathirage, C.
• Keraminiyage, K.
• Amaratunga, D.
• Hatfield, A.

Abstract

Steel, mild or high strength, has been the traditional material for the reinforcement of concrete in Ghana. The high cost of steel and the need to use reinforced concrete in areas of low applied loads have necessitated the look at using materials other than steel for reinforcement. Drawing on that, this study investigates the use of plastic in the form of ebonite strips as reinforcement in concrete beams. Tests were conducted to determine the tensile and bonding strength of ebonite strip and the flexural strength of ebonite strip-reinforced concrete beams, on the assumption that the flexural strength of the beam is derived primarily from the concrete/ebonite strip bonding action. The tests revealed that the failure strengths of ebonite strip-reinforced beam is much lower than that of comparable steel-reinforced concrete beam; the reason being the low bond between ebonite strips and concrete. It is therefore inferred that ebonite strips cannot be used as a complete substitute for steel reinforcement. However, the flexural failure loads obtained revealed that for lightly loaded concrete elements such as lintels over small openings of up to 1000mm, ebonite strip can be used in place of steel reinforcement. The tests also revealed that the top threshold of ebonite strip input was about 5% of the cross-sectional area of the lintel beam. It was observed that ebonite strip would be beneficial for use in flexural members if they could be anchored to the concrete by a suitable mechanical means at their ends, in a manner similar to anchor blocks in steel pre-stressed tendons and, additionally, have their surfaces roughened or ribbed.

Topics

• impedance spectroscopy
• surface
• polymer
• experiment
• strength
• steel
• flexural strength
• drawing