Flexural Behaviour of FRC Beams Wrapped With FRP

Abstract

Structural elements such as beams, slabs and columns may require strengthening during their service life period. A concrete structure may need strengthening for many reasons such as to increase live load capacity, to add reinforcement to a member that has been unsigned or wrongly constructed. The FRPs have various advantages like, high strength to weight ratio, corrosion resistance and ease of installation and flexibility in its use. FRP material which are available in the form of sheet are being used to strengthen a variety of RC elements to enhance the flexural, shear and axial load carrying capacity of these elements. The objective of this experiment is to strengthen the RC beams using fibres and FRP sheets in flexure. In this experimental program CFRP and GFRP sheets were applied to the bottom surface and sides of the concrete beam with different configuration and their performance in flexure were studied. In this experimental program eight RC beams of size 1500 x 150 x 200mm were casted with two 10mm dia. bars as tension zone, two 8mm dia. bars as compression zone and 8mm dia. bars @ 200mm c/c spacing as shear reinforcement. The experimental result shows that the flexural strength of FRP wrapped beams were increased in the range of 23.49% to 67.9% in comparison with the flexural strength of the control beam (unwrapped). The flexural strength of the beam wrapped with the single layer CFRP at the soffit and around the sides (for full depth of the beam) and beam wrapped with the single layer GFRP at the soffit and around the sides (for full depth of the beam) exhibits better performance compared with other FRP beams and increase in flexure was 67.9% in comparison with the capacity of the control beam.