Analysis and Residual Behavior of Encased Pultruded GFRP I-Beam under Fire Loading

Abstract

In this paper, fire resistance and residual capacity tests were carried out on encased pultruded glass fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP) I-beams with high-strength concrete beams. The specimens were loaded concurrently under 25% of the ultimate load and fire exposure (an increase in temperature of 700 °C) for 70 min. Subsequently, the fire-damaged specimens were allowed to cool and then were loaded statically until failure to explore the residual behaviors. The effects of using shear connectors and web stiffeners on the residual behavior were investigated. Finite Element (FE) analysis was developed to simulate the encased pultruded GFRP I-beams under the effect of fire loading. The thermal analyses were performed using the general-purpose FE ABAQUS package. This simulation considered the material and geometric nonlinearities and the effect of temperature on the constitutive models of materials. The FE results showed good agreement with the experimental data. The residual peak load and the corresponding mid-span deflection obtained were 5% and 4% higher than those of the experimental results. The validated FE model was utilized to explore the influence of the tensile strength of GFRP and concrete compressive strength on the post-fire flexural behavior of the encased GFRP I-beams. The encased GFRP beams kept higher residual peak loads. Moreover, the encased GFRP beam with shear connectors (EGS-F), encased GFRP beam with web stiffeners (EGW-F), and encased GFRP beam with shear connectors and web stiffeners (EGSW-F) exhibited higher residual peak loads due to the presence of shear connectors and web stiffeners. However, the web stiffeners showed a minor enhancement in the peak load.