Comparative study on the flexural behaviour of GFRP reinforced concrete beams and steel reinforced concrete beams

Abstract

Production of steel is a lengthy process which takes a lot of capital and effort to make it possible also the production of steel is also causing the generation of lots of pollutants and waste products. Steel production cannot be possible at the small units. So, it is not possible to establish production units of steel at small distances which increase the transportation costs also large projects like steel production are out of reach to the small investors which just produce wealth for already large investors. Presently multi day's manageable infrastructural development requests the elective material that ought to fulfil specialized necessities of basic steel, just as some different properties which steel doesn't convey, ought to be available. As a result, Glass fibres are mixed with resins (adhesives) to make a stiff bar type element known as GFRP bars are produced. This thesis presents to take a shot at the reasonableness of GFRP bars as an option in contrast to traditional steel i.e. HYSD bars. This present work shows of properties such as flexural strength (at the ultimate moment and cracking moment), deflection-load properties, ductility, energy absorption and crack pattern analysis of GFRP-steel beams and conventional steel beams. The presented work would prove to be very useful in understanding the behaviour of beams made by replacing conventional steel bars by GFRP. Use of GFRP bars in creating beams provides a satisfactory solution to some of the main problem of corrosion and environmental problems associated with steel industries. Four arrangements of steel-RC beams and GFRP-RC beam are compared with each other after designing each arrangement for the same ultimate moment in both steel-RC and GFRP-RC beam. The test results mostly depend on the reinforcement ratio in both the beams. However, steel beams have shown good results in comparison but if results are compromised by other factors like cost, corrosion resistance, light-weightiness and some other factor than GFRP bars can be replaced by steel. New formulas are also prepared of ultimate moment capacity in the thesis which gives good agreement with experimental values.