Mani, Atul and S, Suriya Prakash
(2018)
EFFECT OF SYNTHETIC STRUCTURAL FIBER REINFORCEMENT ON THE FLEXURAL BEHAVIOR OF GFRP REINFORCED CONCRETE BEAMS.
Masters thesis, Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad.
Abstract
Corrosion of steel reinforcement is one of the major issues in reinforced concrete structures which affects its durability in the coastal environmental conditions. The use of fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) bars as an internal reinforcement has become prominent in the past decade to mitigate the problems associated with corrosion. However, the brittle failure mode of FRP reinforced beams is a major challenge for the design engineers and researchers. In this study, the use of structural synthetic fibers is proposed for improving the ductile behavior of RC beams with Glass Fiber Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) as internal reinforcement. Macro synthetic polyolefin fiber is chosen as the fiber reinforcing material. No previous work in past has focused on the use of macro synthetic polyolefin fibers in the performance improvement of GFRP bars reinforced concrete beams. Therefore, this study tries to fill in the knowledge gap existing in this research area and aims to provide experimental data for further development of analytical models and design equations. In total, ten reinforced beams were tested under flexure. The specimen includes: (i) control beam with steel reinforcement, (ii) GFRP reinforced beam without fibers, (iii) GFRP reinforced beams with 0.35%, 0.70%, and 1.00% synthetic fibers. To maintain the same stiffness across all the classes of specimens, in the beams reinforced with GFRP bars, the area of reinforcement is chosen to be equivalent to the area of steel used in control beam. The specimens were tested under four-point bending configuration in a displacement control mode. The experimental results are compared with the predictions obtained from the sectional analysis. Results were also compared from the data obtained from Digital Image Correlation (DIC) technique. Crack width is measured in constant moment zone with the help of DIC. Beams with GFRP reinforcement exhibited higher load carrying capacity (about 59%) but the ductility of the beam reduces significantly when compared to RC beams with steel reinforcement. Addition of fibers improved the ductility significantly when compared to GFRP reinforced beams without synthetic fibers. It is observed that the load carrying capacity for beams with 0.35%, 0.70%, and 1% fibers, increased by 72.6%, 100%, and 55% respectively when compared to beams with steel reinforcement. Moreover, at a higher fiber dosage of 1.0%, the peak strength is found to decrease though it had higher ductility and energy absorption.
Actions (login required)
 |
View Item |
Altmetric
Altmetric