Reinforced concrete beams strengthened with steel fiber concrete

Abstract

The aim of the study at exploring joint behavior under load of steel fiber concrete strengthening jackets (SFRC) and reinforced concrete beams at all loading stages. It is necessary for further development of calculation methodology for this strengthening method for members subjected to bending. Experimental results were obtained for assessment of strength, stiffness, crack resistance and failure behavior with a crack propagation pattern for the examined 4 samples (two with strengthening jackets and two reference non-strengthened samples). It has been found that the use of an SFRC jacket 45 mm in thickness with 2.5% fiber content (at the rate of 196 kg per cubic meter) increases the failure load by 20%, the stiffness - 3.4-11 times in the course of loading, and crack resistance - about 2.6 times. The results obtained were compared with the computer simulation in ANSYS PC: the discrepancy between the cracking load, failure load and deflection values for full scale samples and the computer model were found to be within 6.3 %.