Non-proprietary bar splice sleeve for precast concrete construction

•The paper presents the development of a new bar splice sleeve for precast concrete construction.•The developed system accommodates current production tolerances while being economical, easy to produce, and non-proprietary.•Testing 18 specimens had shown that the new splice sleeve can fully develop the ultimate strength of the bar.•A simplified design method was proposed and validated using the results of the experimental and analytical investigations.

Over the last few decades, the use of precast concrete components have been significantly increasing in building and bridge construction due to their quality, durability, and speed of construction. Precast components need to be fully connected to ensure the integrity, serviceability, and durability of the completed structure. Several proprietary grout-filled sleeves are currently being used to splice reinforcing bars of the adjacent precast components. These sleeves require very tight tolerances in precast production to ensure the alignment of the spliced bars, which usually results in using larger and more costly sleeves than needed. The objective of this paper is to introduce a non-proprietary bar splice sleeve that accommodates current production tolerances in addition to being economical and easy to produce. The design method of the proposed splice sleeve and the analytical investigation conducted using FE analysis are discussed. The experimental investigation conducted using two alternatives of the proposed bar splice sleeve is presented. Eighteen specimens for splicing #8 and #9 bars were tested using different sleeve lengths. Test results indicated that the proposed bar splice sleeve have adequate capacity to fully develop reinforcing bars while being simpler to use and more economical than current proprietary splice sleeves.