The use of welded wire fabric as shear reinforcement in concrete lintels

The purpose of this study was to evaluate design assumptions in the use of welded wire fabric as web reinforcement in precast concrete lintels. Casting processes have made the use of conventional shear reinforcement in form of stirrups not possible. Welded wire fabric placed vertically in the longitudinal direction has been employed to act as shear steel to accommodate fabrication procedures.

In the evaluation there was a total of sixteen full size precast lintels which were fabricated by Southern Cast Stone Company as representative of their normal casting process. In the sixteen lintels were three commonly produced cross sections. These cross sections varied in depth, so that, the test variables were amount of shear reinforcement and beam depth.

Concurrent with the load testing operation, deflections at midspan were measured to evaluate the flexural characteristics of the lintels as compared to calculated values. In certain lintels, electrical resistance gages were attached to the reinforcement to monitor stresses under loading.

The major finding of this research work was that the welded wire fabric did not increase the load capacity of lintels in two of the three cross sections. From these results some additional questions have been raised that will require additional testing in this area to be answered.