Thermoelasto-Plastic Modeling of Structural Steel: A Parameter Study on Residual Stress Concentrations in Ribbed Reinforcing Bars

Ribbed reinforcing bars (rebars) are subjected to cyclic loading stresses in service and during fatigue testing. During fatigue testing, rebars exhibit largely scattering test results. With regard to an improved fatigue performance, it is of interest to know if the fatigue test results (general performance, scattering) are affected by residual stresses, which evolve during thermo-mechanical manufacturing. For this task, residual stresses in rebars were predicted by a numerical model. With the model, the influence of individual geometry and process parameters on the residual stress distribution was studied. The numerical results indicate that the fatigue performance of rebars is affected by residual stresses to a limited extent. The largely scattering test results most probably cannot be explained by variations of the residual stress distribution.