Zhenhai Guo, in Principles of Reinforced Concrete, 2014. 11.5.4 Reinforcement without yielding plateau. Usually, the carbon steel wires of high-strength, steel strand, cold-drawn wire of low-carbon steel are used only in prestressed concrete structures. The stress–strain curves of them do not obviously show any yielding plateau (e.g. Fig. 6-7), and the nominal yield strength of them (f 0.2 .