Flexural Capacity Predictions and Comparisons of GFRP Reinforced Beams

Abstract

Concrete in the construction application always requires steel bars as reinforcement, particularly against tensile stress occurred in concrete. This is because concrete has a very low tensile strength. However, the use of reinforcing steel gives another problem, namely its susceptibility to corrosion. This paper discusses the use of GRP reinforcement as a substitute for steel reinforcement especially for aggressive environmental areas. GFRP has the advantage of being a corrosion resistance that is far better than steel. The steel bars yield before failure, but not with the GFRP bars since they remain elastic at failure. This is due to the difference between the properties of the steel and GFRP materials, thus leads to the difference in the flexural design procedure. This paper studies the comparison of the theoretical flexural strength design of various codes worldwide as well as several methods for predicting the flexural capacity of beams proposed by various researchers. The various percentages of flexural reinforcement possibly used in beams are discussed and compared. Some of the codes used for comparisons include the FIB Bulletin 40, ECP 208-2005, ACI 440.1R-15, and CSA 806-12.