Abstract

Ferrocement is usually made from a mortar of Portland cement, sand and fine gravel applied to steel reinforcement which is provided in small aperture wire mesh and/ or closely spaced small diameter bars or wires. This study aimed to determine the third-point load effect on bending moment of slotted ferrocement beams. It was conducted using a single-factor experiment with six levels of factors being employed. The experiments used five treatments with six replications. Results show that the provision of two or more layers of wire mesh reinforcement will lead to an increase in the flexural strength of the section and increase the number of layers of wire mesh reinforcement could allow the beam to exhibit ductile behavior. The number of cracks in the beam will increase, and the distance of such spacing will decrease. This behavior of cracking can effectively delay the occurrence of a failure in the specimen.