How to prepare Bar Bending Schedule - Site Engineering Guide

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Bar Bending Schedule (BBS)Basics

Before we see how to prepare a bar bending schedule, let us first try to understand what it is. A BBS is a table that lists all the information about different steel reinforcement bars being used. It is used for mainly two purposes,

To prepare estimates for weight of steel reinforcement bars
As instruction to the bar bender on how to cut and prepare different bars for construction

By the end of this article I will give you a free tool for preparing bar bending schedule

How to make a bar bending schedule

BBS is prepared by looking at the working drawings and figuring out the types of bars being used their length, numbers, diameter, and other details and using some calculations to figure out the total weight of bars, let us look at each one of these in detail.

How to calculate the weight of a rebar

Imaging a pencil weighs 1kg( I know it is insane but stay with me). Then 10 pencil will weigh 10kg, 100 pencils will weigh 100kg. Similarly, we can find the weight of rebar, we first calculate wt of 1m of a bar and then we simply multiply that weight with the no of meters of a bar we have.

Then the question is, how do we find weight of 1m of any rebar. The answer is simpler than you might think, it is simply d*d/162 where d is the diameter of the bar

So 8mm bar will weigh 8*8/162=0.395Kg/m

12mm bar will weigh 12*12/162=0.89Kg/m

And so on.

We call this the weight of 1 Unit of bar or simply the Unit Weight of Bar.

bar bending schedule of a 10 m rebar — bar bending schedule of a 12mm bar of 10m length

So a 10m of 12mm rebar will weigh 10 * 0.89=8.9kg

Or simply Length*UnitWeight

Bent Reinforcements

Now we are rarely going to use a straight bar. Most of the time we will have to bend the bar as per the designs received. This doesn’t change a thing, just add the length of all the bent sections of the bar and multiply it with the Unit Weight of the bar

bar bending schedule of a 1mm bended bar — 12mm bended steel reinforcement bar bbs

Calculation of Number of bars

And we are rarely going to use a single bar

Normally you will be given a drawing with length width height of the structure and spacing to be used for a bar, you will have to calculate the no of bars

Number of bars = (Length -2*cover)/spacing +1

Where

Length is the length/width of concrete structure

The cover is the concrete cover

Spacing is the space between individual bars

Why +1?

To answer this let see a simple case where length is 5m and spacing is 1m( forget about cover for now )

In this case, No of bars is 5m/1m=5

Now let us provide five bars

number of bars in a bbs — how we calculate the number of bars needed

As you can see there is still space left for one more and this is exactly why we add 1 extra bar

bbs of 12mm bar with number of bars included — bar bending schedule of 12mm steel reinforcement bar with 6 no of bars

But wait we are not done, we still have one last thing to discuss.

Deduction in BBS

Depending on who you ask, this will either be the best thing or this is going to be the greatest sin you’ve ever committed.

Let’s first see what this is and how to apply it( Only If you have to )

When you bend rebar it stretches.

When you stretch a 100g loaf of bread, it still weighs 100g, stretching it will increase its length but not weight.

So instead of directly multiplying the Unit weight with the length, we must first decrease the length by the amount it was stretched.

People who support this say that a bar stretches “d units” for every 45-degree bend where d is the diameter of the rebar

This means

D for 45

2D for 90

3D for 135

And

4D for 180

So we count the number and angle of bends and subtract the length of the stretched bar with these values to get the actual length before multiplying it with the Unit Weight.