Flexural behavior of FRP reinforced concrete beam

Abstract

The flexural behavior of FRP reinforced concrete beam has been the topic of previous research, because of the spread of use of modern FRP composite materials as concrete reinforcement in technical practice. The behavior of FRP reinforced member is vastly different from the one reinforced with steel, mainly because of vast difference between moduli of elasticity of FRP composite and steel. This difference results in the fact that conventional design methods used for years in the field of reinforced concrete structures using steel reinforcement give very poor results if attempted use with FRP reinforced structures. Results of conventional methods are so poor that use of such methods would be dangerous - they tend to overestimate load carrying capacity and underestimate deformations - both resulting in unsafe predictions. This thesis points to formulating easy to use and comprehensible method of evaluating FRP reinforced concrete structures subjected to bending loading, not requiring specialized software and utilizing 1D finite elements.

The flexural behavior of FRP reinforced concrete beam has been the topic of previous research, because of the spread of use of modern FRP composite materials as concrete reinforcement in technical practice. The behavior of FRP reinforced member is vastly different from the one reinforced with steel, mainly because of vast difference between moduli of elasticity of FRP composite and steel. This difference results in the fact that conventional design methods used for years in the field of reinforced concrete structures using steel reinforcement give very poor results if attempted use with FRP reinforced structures. Results of conventional methods are so poor that use of such methods would be dangerous - they tend to overestimate load carrying capacity and underestimate deformations - both resulting in unsafe predictions. This thesis points to formulating easy to use and comprehensible method of evaluating FRP reinforced concrete structures subjected to bending loading, not requiring specialized software and utilizing 1D finite elements.