A Comparative Study on the Flexural Behaviour of One-Way Concrete Slabs Reinforced with GFRP Reinforcements and Conventional Reinforcements when Subjected to Monotonic and Repeated Loading

Abstract

Over the last couple of decades, the interest in using advanced high performance materials in the construction industry has been shooting up and developing to reduce the overall life-cycle costs of structures. Accordingly, many researches have been carried out to invent new materials which possess the properties comparatively more advantageous than conventional steel reinforcements. Fibre Reinforced Polymer (FRP) reinforcements are considered as new, high tech and ideal materials optimistically used in many countries in the construction field especially in the construction of bridge deck slabs. So many researches have been done to assess the¬ mechanical properties of FRP reinforcements , flexural and shear behaviours of FRP reinforced structural elements under static or monotonic loading. But only limited works have been brought out on the fatigue performance of FRP reinforced structural elements. This paper presents the flexural behaviour of one-way slabs reinforced with Glass Fibre Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) reinforcements (special type of FRP reinforcements) under monotonic loading and two different schemes of repeated loading. A total number of twenty one GFRP reinforced concrete one- way slabs were constructed, out of which seven were tested under monotonic loading, seven were tested under constant amplitude repeated loading and the remaining seven slabs were tested under variable amplitude repeated loading conditions. The behaviour of GFRP reinforced slabs were compared with that of steel reinforced slabs. It has been found that the ultimate load carrying capacities and fatigue performance of GFRP slabs were greater than that of steel slabs. Also there exists a good agreement between the theoretical and experimental results.