Lateral stresses on bond strength of deformed steel bars in concrete: Analytical model

Owing to the importance of bond performance for assessing and maintaining the safety and durability of in-service reinforced concrete structures subjected to complex stresses. However, theoretical models that consider the effect of lateral stresses on the bond of deformed bars are not yet available. In the present study, a predictive model incorporating internal pressure, failure modes, and lateral stresses is proposed for assessing the bond strength of deformed bars embedded in concrete. The SIFs-based crack propagation criterion is employed to estimate the internal pressure for different concrete section shapes and crack numbers with the help of stress intensity factors and weight function. A comparison is conducted based on 134 experimental data without lateral stress, with an integral absolute error (IAE) of 12.6% for the proposed model, which is considerably lower than other models. Validating the proposed model for lateral stress confinement's accuracy in predicting both failure modes. A simplified expression involving lateral stresses is proposed that is highly correlated with the splitting bond strength.