Performance evaluation of different shapes of headed bars in steel fiber reinforced concrete

The behavior of headed bars in concrete is investigated through 108 pullout tests having an embedment depth of eight times the bar diameter in the M20 concrete mix. Headed bars are designed based on ASTM A970-16 and ACI 318-19 recommendations. The primary parameters used in this study are the steel bar diameter, the steel fibers percentage, and the head shapes. Three failure modes namely, Steel, Concrete-Blowout & Pull-Through failure have been observed. Based on loaddeflection curves which are plotted to investigate the bond capacity of headed bars, it is observed that the circular-headed bars have displayed the highest peak load. The comparative analysis shows the smaller differences in the ultimate bond strength between MC2010 (0.89-2.26 MPa) and EN 1992-1-1 (2.32 MPa) as compared to ACI-318-19 (11-22 MPa) which is due to the absence of embedment depth and peak load factor in MC2010 and EN 1992-1-1 respectively.