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.