The Importance of Reinforcement Placement and Concrete Cover in Reinforced Concrete Beam Performance

Concrete, which has been used as a building material in the construction industry for many years, is a brittle material with high compressive strength and low tensile strength, and is supported by steel reinforcement, which is a ductile material, especially in tensile zones. For this reason, adherence, which is the interface shear stress that provides the interlock between concrete and reinforcement, is the reason for the existence of reinforced concrete. Adherence can only be achieved with appropriate reinforcement placement and concrete cover. For this reason, errors that may occur in the application directly affect adherence. In this study, in order to investigate the consequences of errors in reinforcement placement and concrete cover thickness during application, 8 reinforced concrete beams in 4 different groups of 1/2 scale, with a cross section of 15x30 cm and a length of 205 cm were produced and it was aimed to experimentally determine the effect of the placement of the tensile zone reinforcement in the beam span and the adherence caused by the concrete cover on the beam performance. As a result of the three-point bending test, it was observed that if the concrete cover and reinforcement placement are made in accordance with the standards, the maximum bearing capacity decreases due to the increased adherence, while the leading cracks in reinforced concrete beams occur under higher loads, more number of capillary cracks are formed instead of large cracks and the beams behave more rigid. In cases where adherence is not achieved, ribbed reinforcement behaves similar to the behaviour of plain reinforcement and forms wide cracks by stripping.