Effect of Surface Coating on the Bonding Strength of Reinforcing Steel Bars in Concrete Structures

Abstract

Concrete is very poor in bearing tensile load. In order to increase the tensile strength of concrete structures, they are reinforced with steel bars. At the same time, in many practical applications, bar corrosion is one of the vital reasons that decrease the service life of the concrete structures as well as the safety of the users. To avoid such a problem, various metallic and nonmetallic (polymer) coatings are applied to reduce the corrosion attack on the reinforcing steel bars. In the present work, reinforcing steel bar-concrete bonding strength for the as-received and steel bars coated with two different synthetic paints of local brands and one other band have been investigated. The investigation shows that steel bars coated with epoxy paint showed the highest bonding strength, which is very similar to the as-received uncoated bars.