Concrete Reinforcing Net: Safe Design

The limit design of a dence regular reinforcing net in concrete panels or walls under in-plane loading is studied with consideration of friction on the cracks due to aggregate interlock. The previously established hyperbolic yield locus, which corresponds to simultaneous yielding of reinforcing bars of both directions, does not give the complete domain of safe reinforcing ratios. The safe domain is larger and the enlargement corresponds to cases when only bars of one direction yield. Those cases are far from the optimum design. Deformations for these cases do not generally conform to the dilatancy ratio that is characteristic of the normal and tangential components on the crack and they do not allow an increase of deformation at constant load.