Is this a good assumption? Unless the bundles are assembled very tightly, what you have is thirty one bars bending individually. Definitely, this affects your bending analysis.
The solid bar is the lower bound deflection assumption. Bars bending individually is the upper bound, which I also gave the deflection for. We can be sure that the actual deflection will be much less than the upper bound, but there is no simple way to know exactly how much less, other than measuring it. But if the upper bound deflection is OK we don't need to know the exact deflection anyway.
What I question: Is a tightly bound bundle of rebar is anywhere close to circular? Another time where the deformations come into play. They are going to make a circular shape fairly hard to achieve. If not circular, the properties (I, S, etc.) of the bundle vary depending on how it is oriented
Sure, but if the cross section is roughly circular the I value including voids is going to increase, and lifting the bars is going to tend to lengthen the vertical axis, which will also increase the I about the horizontal axis, so I think the solid bar assumption is a conservative estimate of the upper bound stiffness.
So if we have two lift points at say 3.75 m from the end, the deflections will be very small and we just need to check the stress.
For a single bar the maximum (unfactored) stress would be 184 MPa, and the maximum stress in bars acting as a group would be much less than that.
As for the number and strength of the tie points, I don't think there is any simple way to calculate that. As was suggested earlier, I'd ask the supplier what they do.
Doug Jenkins
Interactive Design Services