Flexural behavior of reinforced concrete beams strengthened using recycled industrial steel-wire mesh high-performance mortar

Industrial recycled steel wires extracted from waste tires can be combined with high-performance mortar by weaving them into a mesh to apply this type of strengthening method, which exhibits high tensile strength, high toughness, and excellent cracking resistance in building structures. This paper presents a flexural behavior study of reinforced concrete (RC) beams under different industrial recycled steel wire working conditions. We examined the resultant steel-wire mesh high-performance mortar, investigating the stiffness, ductility, and load carrying capacity of the experimental beams under different anchorage measures using different mesh types and sizes. The results showed that both the weaving of the recycled industrial steel wire into a mesh and the rebar-planting anchorage measures were effective in preventing the stripping of the strengthening layers, allowing the tensile performance of the recycled industrial steel wire to be fully utilized and the ultimate load capacity of the RC beams to be considerably increased. At the same time, the industrial recycled steel-wire mesh also played an important role in the inhibition of crack development, with the width of the cracks in the strengthening beams decreasing and an overall appearance of "fine and dense" character. As the volume of steel bars in industrial recycled steel-wire mesh increases, the ultimate bearing capacity and stiffness of the beam increased. To verify the strengthening effect of industrial recycled steel-wire mesh high-performance mortar on the beams from multiple angles, this study used finite element analysis software to conduct numerical simulation analyses on four of the experimental beams. The damage cloud charts of the specimens from the numerical simulations were compared with experimental failure phenomena, the deviations between the simulated and experimental values of the specimens being within 10%—that is, the simulation results were in good agreement with the experimental results. The use of industrial recycled steel-wire mesh high-performance mortar strengthening could be applied in actual projects, its green low-carbon credentials achieving the purpose of solid-waste utilization as well as providing strong support for China's early realization of carbon neutrality and related strategic objectives. At the same time, the recycling of waste tires could provide a new research direction.