Concrete Confinement Ties

A column cage where the column vertical steel as well as the confinement ties is provided in a single sheet of WWR would speed up the construction process even more. Research on this concept was performed at the University of Texas at Austin in the 1980’s and found to be a valid approach. Additional rebars in the corners would probably be required to bring the bending capacity up to a satisfactory level.

Another form of WWR used as column confinement steel are wire reinforcement grids. In this application the confinement steel is made up of individual wires arranged in a grid pattern to supply confinement to each column bar and then welded together by electrical resistance welding. The strength of the weld is great enough to ensure that the grid will provide adequate confinement to the column steel.