Load-Carrying Capacity of Short Concrete Columns Reinforced with Glass Fiber Reinforced Polymer Bars Under Concentric Axial Load

Abstract

In this paper, 1 group of plain concrete square columns 150×150×600 mm and 11 groups of concrete columns reinforced with glass fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP) were cast and tested, each group contains of 3 specimens. These experiments investigated effect of the main reinforcement ratio, stirrup spacing and contribution of longitudinal GFRP bars on the load carrying capacity of GFRP reinforced concrete (RC) columns. Based on the experiment results, the relationship between load-capacity and reinforcement ratio and the plot of contribution of longitudinal GFRP bars to load-capacity versus the reinforcement ratio were built and analyzed. By increasing the reinforcement ratio from 0.36% to 3.24%, the average ultimate strain in columns at maximum load increases from 2.64% to 75.6% and the load-carrying capacity of GFRP RC columns increases from 3.4% to 25.7% in comparison with the average values of plain concrete columns. Within the investigated range of reinforcement ratio, the longitudinal GFRP bars contributed about 0.72%-6.71% of the ultimate load-carrying capacity of the GFRP RC columns. Meanwhile, with the same configuration of reinforcement, contribution of GFRP bars to load-carrying capacity of GFRP RC columns decreases when increasing the concrete strength. The influence of tie spacing on load-carrying capacity of reinforced columns was also taken into consideration. Additionally, experimental results allow us to propose some modifications on the existing formulas to determine the bearing capacity of the GFRP RC column according to the compressive strength of concrete and GFRP bars.