Area of Reinforcement

Summary

Area of Reinforcement - The area of reinforcement is the cross-sectional area of the bar or fabric reinforcement in a reinforced concrete structural element.

Technical Information

In concrete slabs, the area of reinforcement is given per metre width of the slab’s cross section. It can also be given as a percentage of the total cross sectional area of the slab.

The tensile strength of a reinforced concrete element can be calculated quickly by multiplying the area of reinforcement by the tensile strength of the reinforcing material (assuming the tensile strength of the concrete is negligible).

There are useful tables available which can be used to quickly look up the area of reinforcement of a structural element for a given bar diameter and number of bars.
This term is only applicable to bar and fabric reinforcement. Fibre reinforcement is quantified by mass of fibres per unit volume of concrete (kgs/m3).