Experimental Study on the Performance of Concrete Beams Including Holes Reinforced with Glass Fiber Polymer

Abstract

This paper carried out An examination of the performance characteristics of concrete beams including openings that were reinforced with Glass Fiber Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) bars. This investigation studied five reinforced concrete (RC) beams with both longitudinal and transverse GFRP reinforcement with openings in two directions (horizontal and vertical) were studied. Both the orientation of the openings and the number of openings were considered to be the main parameters in this research. These holes are located in the beams' flexural region. The results demonstrate that relative to the reference beam, the vertical openings significantly reduced the maximum load of the tested beams by 27.8% and increased the mid-span displacement by 39% relative to the control beam. In addition, the research results demonstrated that the strength of the beam was scaled down if one equivalent opening was used to substitute for two adjacent openings.