Concrete beams reinforced with heavy-duty metal straps as alternatives to steel reinforcement bars

• Heavy duty metal straps were studied as alternative concrete beam reinforcement. • Straps with equivalent cross-sectional area performed comparably to steel rebars. • Metal strap reinforced beams showed over 50% of steel reinforced beam load capacity. • Reusing metal straps offers an alternative reinforcement in developing countries. Metal strap, used in the packaging industry, is still disposed by landfilling in most developing countries. This study tries to reuse metal straps as replacement of main steel bars in reinforcing normal concrete beams. For this purpose, five concrete beams were cast and tested using three-point load testing. The dimension of the beams was 200 mm x 200 mm x 1200 mm which are width, height, and length respectively. From the five specimens, a beam was control specimen cast without any reinforcement. The rest of the beams were cast with one, two, and three layers of metal straps bundled as three strips to resemble the three steel bars of the last beam that was reinforced with 10 mm steel bars. It is found that metal straps can successfully replace steel bars in reinforcing beams if used with an equivalent cross-sectional area. Moreover, the load-carrying capacity of the beam can increase by more than half compared to that reinforced with steel rebars. Finally, debonding is an issue when metal straps are used in one or two layers. However, this issue can be mitigated when three layers are employed.