reinforced concrete (redirected from Ferrous concrete)

reinforced concrete

Concrete in which steel is embedded in such a manner that the two materials act together in resisting forces. The reinforcing steel—rods, bars, or mesh—absorbs the tensile, shear, and sometimes the compressive stresses in a concrete structure. Plain concrete does not easily withstand tensile and shear stresses caused by wind, earthquakes, vibrations, and other forces and is therefore unsuitable in most structural applications. In reinforced concrete, the tensile strength of steel and the compressive strength of concrete work together to allow the member to sustain these stresses over considerable spans. The invention of reinforced concrete in the 19th century revolutionized the construction industry, and concrete became one of the world's most common building materials.

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reinforced concrete [¦rē·ən′fȯrst ′kän‚krēt]

(civil engineering)

Concrete containing reinforcing steel rods or wire mesh.

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Reinforced concrete

Portland cement concrete containing higher-strength, solid materials to improve its structural properties. Generally, steel wires or bars are used for such reinforcement, but for some purposes glass fibers or chopped wires have provided desired results.

Unreinforced concrete cracks under relatively small loads or temperature changes because of low tensile strength. The cracks are unsightly and can cause structural failures. To prevent cracking or to control the size of crack openings, reinforcement is incorporated in the concrete. Reinforcement may also be used to help resist compressive forces or to improve dynamic properties.

Steel usually is used in concrete. It is elastic, yet has considerable reserve strength beyond its elastic limit. Under a specific axial load, it changes in length only about one-tenth as much as concrete. In compression, steel is more than 10 times stronger than concrete, and in tension, more than 100 times stronger.

During construction, the bars are placed in a form and then concrete from a mixer is cast to embed them. After the concrete has hardened, deformation is resisted and stresses are transferred from concrete to reinforcement by friction and adhesion along the surface of the reinforcement. Individual wires or bars resist stretching and tensile stress in the concrete only in the direction in which such reinforcement extends. Tensile stresses and deformations, however, may occur simultaneously in other directions. Therefore reinforcement must usually be placed in more than one direction. For this purpose, reinforcement sometimes is assembled as a rectangular grid. Bars, grids, and fabric have the disadvantage that the principal effect of reinforcement occurs primarily in the plane of the layer in which they are placed. Consequently, the reinforcement often must be set in several layers or formed into cages. Under some conditions, fiber-reinforced concrete is an alternative to such arrangements. See Composite beam, Concrete, Concrete beam, Concrete column, Concrete slab, Prestressed concrete