ABSTRACT
After some years of stagnation, Lightweight Aggregate Concrete (LWC) is becoming more and more popular in construction practice. Main reasons for this fact are the typical advantages of LWC namely lower dead load and better heat insulation. The structural behaviour of LWC members is significantly influenced by bond characteristics of reinforcement. So, knowledge about bond is of essential importance for design of LWC members. There is an almost uncountable number of investigations on bond behaviour in Normal Weight Concrete (NWC) but only few published results on bond in LWC. Out of these investigations it is known that there are some differences between NWC and LWC, especially based on the brittleness of LWC. However, up-to date there is no consistent opinion about bond characteristics of reinforcement in LWC. For this reason at HTWK Leipzig a research program has been started focused on various aspects of bond of reinforcement in LWC including size effect of reinforcement. The paper describes the main results of carried-out pull-out tests according to RILEM recommendations and gives some advices for development of future regulations in design codes.
