Why Reinforce Concrete?
When you think of concrete, “strength” is probably one of the first qualities that comes to mind. After concrete cures, it is inherently strong but a structure built with concrete must be designed to resist the likely forces that it will encounter. Reinforcing concrete ensures that the structure won’t fail or deflect too much when up against these forces. Reinforcing concrete also reduces cracking and fatigue due to stress and controls deflection due to improper loading.
Common Forces
There are several forces that concrete is reinforced to withstand. Here are the most common ones:
- Snow load
- Wind load
- Earthquake load
- Dead load (the weight of the structure itself)
- Live load (the weight of people or stored materials)
The building code or site specific engineering generally sets the limits for these various design loads.
