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The strength of high yield steel is undoubtedly higher than mild steel and hence high yield steel is commonly used as main steel reinforcement in concrete structures. However, mild yield steel is commonly used in links or stirrups because they can be subjected to bending of a lower radius of curvature.
In reinforced concrete structures cover is normally provided to protect steel reinforcement from corrosion and to provide fire resistance. However, the use of cover more than required is undesirable in the following ways:
(i) The size of crack is controlled by the distance of longitudinal bars to the point of section under consideration. The closer a bar is to this point, the smaller is the crack width. Therefore, closely spaced bars with smaller cover will give narrower cracks than widely spaced bars with larger cover. Consequently, with an increase in concrete cover the crack width will increase.
The corrosion of lifting anchors in precast concrete units has to be prevented because the corroded lifting units cause an increase in steel volume leading to the spalling of nearby surface concrete.
The purpose of cover blocks are:
i. Maintain the required cover.
ii. Prevent steel bars from getting exposed to the atmosphere so that steel corrosion may result.
iii. Place and fix reinforcement based on design drawings.
To answer this question, let’s consider an example of a cube. The surface area to volume ratio of a cube is 6/b where b is the length of the cube. This implies that the surface area to volume ratio decreases with an increase in volume. Therefore, when the size of maximum aggregate is increased, the surface area to be wetted by water per unit volume is reduced. Consequently, the water requirement of the concrete mixes is reduced accordingly so that the water/cement ratio can be lowered, resulting in a rise in concrete strength.
In the event of exposing the concrete structures to a fire, a temperature gradient is established across the cross section of concrete structures. For shallow covers, the steel reinforcement inside the structures rises in temperature.
In contractual aspect, based on the requirement of General Specification of Civil Engineering Works (1992 Edition), the tolerance of concrete cover is between +5mm and –5mm and engineers should not accept sub-standard work because they do not possess the authority to change the acceptance criteria. In case engineers consider contractor’s proposal acceptable in technical point of view, consent has to be sought from the employer regarding the changes in acceptance criteria.
In drying shrinkage, the excessive water which has not taken part in hydration process would migrate from interior of concrete core to the concrete surface. As a result of evaporation of the water moisture, the volume of concrete shrinks. The reduction in volume owing to moisture loss is termed shrinkage. In fact, aggregates in concrete would not cause shrinkage and helps to resist the deformation.
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