Using Welded Reinforcing Mesh in Concrete Slabs and Screeds
Welded reinforcing mesh, sometimes called mesh fabric or fabric reinforcement, is one of the most common ways to put steel into flat concrete. It arrives as a flat sheet of longitudinal and transverse wires welded together at every intersection, ready to lay straight into the formwork. Compared with tying individual bars by hand, mesh is faster, more consistent, and far less prone to human error on spacing. But that convenience only pays off if the sheet is specified, positioned, and detailed correctly. A slab with the right mesh in the wrong place is often no better than a slab with no mesh at all.
What the Steel Is Actually Doing in a Slab
Concrete is strong in compression but weak in tension. When a slab bends under load, or shrinks and cools as it cures, the concrete on the stretched face wants to crack. The welded mesh sits in that tension zone and carries the pull the concrete cannot, holding hairline cracks tightly closed instead of letting them open into visible, moisture-tracking fractures. In a ground-bearing floor the mesh mainly controls shrinkage and thermal cracking and helps the slab span local soft spots in the sub-base. In a suspended slab it forms part of the structural load path and must be
