Bases De Licitacion

Journal of Civil Engineering and Construction Technology, Vol. 1(2), pp. 27-42, December 2010 Available online at http://www.academicjournals.org/jcect ISSN 2141-2634 ©2010 Academic Journals

Full Length Research Paper

An experimental study on the flexural behavior of FRP RC beams and a comparison of the ultimate moment capacity with ACI
Iman Chitsazan1, Mohsen Kobraei2*, Mohd Zamin Jumaat2and Payam Shafigh2
2

Department of Civil Engineering, Babol Noshirvani University of Technology, Babol, Iran. Department of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Accepted 4 November, 2010

1

As it is known, fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) bars are typically quite different from those of steel bars and they depend mainly on bothmatrix and fibers type, as well as on their volume fraction; although generally, FRP bars have lower weight, lower modulus of elasticity, but higher strength than steel. In the other hand, FRP has disadvantages, for instance: no yielding before brittle rupture and low transverse strength. In this research, we have investigated flexural behavior in reinforced concrete beams with glass fiber-reinforcedpolymer (GFRP) and have analyzed the different kinds of failure, ultimate moment capacity, deflection, load of first crack, how to create and expand cracks, tensile and compressive strains created on beam and position of neutral axis (NA) during loading for different ratios of bars on 10 laboratorial specimens. Using high strength concrete instead of normal concrete and increasing the effectivedepth over the breadth on flexural behavior of concrete beams with GFRP had been studied. Results taken from the experimental tests have been compared with ACI 440 and they show that deflections, width of cracks and the cracks’ extent are further used toward the usual RC beams. High strength concrete instead of normal concrete is the ascended load of the first crack and it created more cracks, butwith less width of crack. It is recommended that the selected ratio of effective depth over breadth (d/b) is slightly larger than 2. In addition, it can be said that the amount of the balanced bar provided by ACI 400 is not an exact criteria to determine the type of failure, and it is only in cases where the ratio of bars are lower than the balanced mode that ruptures occur in reinforcement area.Key words: Concrete beam, fiber reinforced polymer (FRP), flexural behavior, ultimate moment, deflection. INTRODUCTION For years, civil engineers have been searching alternatives to steels and alloys to combat the high costs of repair and maintenance of structures damaged by corrosion and heavy use. With progress made by the polymer industry in the world, researchers think that these materialsshould be used in building structures. Following their researches, the thought of using polymer materials instead of steel in concrete structures, led to the entry of fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) into field structures and constructions. Fiber reinforced polymers (FRP) bars are non-corrosive and as such, they have higher strength than their steel counterparts. Also, they have been used in aggressiveenvironments such as water treatments plants instead of steel (AlMusallam et al., 1997; Alsayed, 1998, 1997; Benmokrane et al., 1995, 1996; Brown and Bartholomew, 1993; Deitz et al., 1999; Duranovic et al., 1997; Grace et al., 1998; Masmoudi et al., 1998; Michaluk et al., 1998; Pecce et al., 2000; Thériault and Benmokrane, 1998). The other merits of fiber reinforced polymer are derived from itslight weight and non-magnetic characteristics (Thériault and Benmokrane, 1998; Yost et al., 2001; Tureyen and Frosch, 2002), but the use of these materials have been limited because of the low modulus of elasticity and low ductility of large creeps which these problems result to (Thériault and Benmokrane, 1998; Yost et al., 2001; Tureyen and Frosch, 2002;

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