Behaviour of Reinforced Concrete Beams Bonded with Glass Fibre Reinforced Polymer and Carbon Fibre Reinforced Polymer Sheets

Abstract

Concrete, a mixture of different aggregates bonded with cement, first developed around 150BC in Rome has been bedrock to the modern Infrastructure. It is used to build everything from roads, bridges, dams to sky scrapers. Strengthening concrete is traditionally done by using steels but the developments in technology in recent decades allowed to use fiber reinforced plastics which are externally bonded to concrete . Such composite materials offer high strength, low weight, corrosion resistance, high fatigue resistance, easy and rapid installation and minimal change in structural geometry. This study investigates the behavior of reinforced concrete beams bonded with fiber composites. A numerical study is conducted to study the behavior of RC beam under Static third point loading. Concrete beam specimens with dimensions of 150 mm width, 300 mm height, and 2600 mm length are modelled. These beams are externally bonded with Glass Fiber Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) sheets and Carbon Fibre Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) sheets. In present study, we examine the performance of reinforced concrete beams which are bonded with GFRP and CFRP sheets with various thicknesses (1, 2 & 3 mm) using ABAQUS in terms of failure modes, enhancement of load capacity, load-deflection analysis and flexural behaviour