Fibre-Reinforced Polymers and Steel for the Reinforcement of Wooden Elements—Experimental and Numerical Analysis

Abstract

These elements are innovative and of interest to many researchers for the reinforcement of wooden elements. For the reinforced beam elements, the effect of the reinforcement factor, FRP and steel elastic modulus or FRP and steel arrangement of the reinforcement on the performance of the flexural elements was determined, followed by reading the load-displacement diagram of the reinforced beam elements. The finite element model was then developed and verified with the experimental results, which was mainly related to the fact that the general theory took into account the typical tensile failure mode, which can be used to predict the flexural strength of reinforced timber beams. From the tests, it was determined that reinforced timber beam elements had relatively ductile flexural strengths up to brittle tension for unreinforced elements. As for the reinforcements of FRP, the highest increase in load-bearing capacity was for carbon mats at 52.47%, with a reinforcement grade of 0.43%, while the lowest was for glass mats at 16.62% with a reinforcement grade of 0.22%. Basalt bars achieved the highest stiffness, followed by glass mats. Taking into account all the reinforcements used, the highest stiffness was demonstrated by the tests of the effectiveness of the reinforcement using 3 mm thick steel plates. For this configuration with a reinforcement percentage of 10%, this increase in load capacity was 79.48% and stiffness was 31.08%. The difference between the experimental and numerical results was within 3.62–27.36%, respectively.