Analytical Investigation on the Effect of Test Setup on Bond Strength

Experimental procedures used for the study of reinforcement to concrete bond have been hampered for a long time by inconsistencies and large differences in the obtained behavior, such as bond strength and mode of failure, depending on the specimen form and setup used in the test. Bond is controlled by the mechanics of the interface between reinforcement and concrete, and is sensitive to the influences of extraneous factors, several of which underlie, but are not accounted for, in conventional pullout test setups. To understand and illustrate the importance of specimen form and testing arrangement, a series of computational simulations are used in the present work on eight distinct variants of conventional bar pullout test setups that are used routinely in experimental literature for the characterization of bond-slip laws. The resulting bond strength increase generated by unaccounted confining stress fields that arise around the bar because of the boundary conditions of the test setup is used to classify the tests with respect to their relevance with the intended use of the results. Of the pullout setups examined, the direct tension pullout test produced the most conservative bond strength results, completely eliminating the contributions from eccentricity and passive confinement.