Reinforced Cement Concrete (R.C.C) is a composite material having cement concrete and reinforcing bars. But the million dollar question is why we have to go for a RCC structure. In the olden days, structures were primarily built with timber or in masonry but in the last two centuries people are demanding RCC structure due to limitations of timber and masonry structures, we all know it is very difficult nowadays to get timber and also many governments have restricted use of timber due to various environmental reasons and as far as masonry structures is concerned it is too weak in earthquake prone zones and also good quality stones are very rare nowadays to have a stone masonry buildings. Due to some of these limitations the new material was developed and it could take care of many things which a timber and masonry structure was failing, in RCC structure timber is not used and also RCC structures have good ductility which was missing in masonry structure.
As said above RCC is a composite material, it is made up of two materials, that is, Concrete and Steel. But once again the question revolves in mind why two materials? Is concrete alone not sufficient? Why to insert steel in concrete and so on. The biggest advantage of concrete which a civil engineer will study in concrete technology and also in material testing lab that is concrete is fantastic in compression, it has got high resistance against compression loads or stresses but it is very weak to take up tensile loads or stresses, tensile strength of concrete is just 10% of its compressive strength, also concrete is brittle in nature and it is a major drawback to construct a building having only concrete and overcome this difficulty we have to incorporate steel (reinforcement) in concrete which is good to take up tensile stresses which concrete cannot take up and hence combination of both these materials makes an ideal building material, reinforcement is usually round in shape having surface deformations to have good interlocking properties, when steel is completely surrounded by the hardened concrete mass, it forms an integral part of the member and the resulting combination of these two materials is known as “REINFORCED CEMENT CONCRETE” or simply “RCC”
Prof. Abhijeet Baikerikar
Founder, All About Civil Engineering
