Quality of Steel bars on the Ugandan Market
Abstract
This report details the research on assessing the quality of a number of iron bars on the Ugandan
market. The research was experimental in design.
Uganda is rapidly growing with an increased demand for more infrastructure. To meet the demand,
buildings are being set up in very short times. This has brought about an insidious effect of the
sudden collapse of buildings. The sudden collapse of buildings has been owed to, among, many
reasons, the use of poor quality of materials. One of the most commonly used materials are the
steel bars. To aid into investigations into what the cause of these sudden collapses could be, the
quality of the steel bars on the market was examined by looking into their properties. Ribbed steel
bars of seven different sizes from three of the top manufacturers will be evaluated. The tensile
behavior, bending behavior and chemical composition were tested using the Universal Testing
machine and from the spark emission spectrometer respectively. The results were analyzed and
compared to the FDEAS 412-2, ASTM 615M and BS4449 2005 standards. The steel bars tested met
the standards for the chemical and bending tests. 66.7 % of the selected steel bars mechanical
properties were up to the standards. The properties combined were just beating the bare minimum
of the standard set values. The steel bars had very inconsistent compositions of the alloying
elements which adversely affected the mechanical properties.
The negligence of quality control during production could account for the inconsistent chemical
and mechanical properties exhibited by the steel bars on market.