The separation of reinforced cementitious composites with a stream-line cutting tool

The paper provides a model for the cutting of reinforced concrete members with stream-line cutting tools. The model is an extended version of the energy model originally developed by Momber and Kovacevic (1995) for hydro-abrasive machining. The model allows the stepwise calculation of the energy absorbed during the cutting of the two parts of the compound - steel bar and matrix material. Hydro-abrasive cutting tests on different cementitious composites are performed in order to verify the numerical results. It is shown that the cutting process can be subdivided into four cutting stages whose locations depended on the energy locally available at the erosion site.