A numerical analysis of compressive strength of rectangular concrete columns confined by FRP

Abstract

This investigation presents an analysis procedure for simulating the compressive behavior of a rectangular concrete column confined by fiber-reinforced plastic (FRP) under uniaxial load. That is, the entire stress-strain curve can be drawn through the present analysis procedure. The modified Mander's stress-strain model (Mander, et al. 1988) and finite element method are adopted in this analysis procedure. The numerical analysis results are compared with the experimental results to verify the accuracy of the analysis procedure. This study offers a useful analysis procedure of researching the compressive behavior of rectangular concrete columns confined by FRP. Two main parameters, the number of FRP layers and the radius of the round corners of a rectangular column, are investigated. The numerical results show that non-uniform stresses occur and reduce the sectional effective area owing to the geometry of the confined rectangular column. The stresses are concentrated at the corners of the rectangular column. Compressive strength of a rectangular column increases greatly because the number of FRP layers increase. The maximum predicted compressive stress of the rectangular column has approximately 10% error as compared to the experimental results. Comparing the numerical and experimental results demonstrates that the accuracy of this analysis procedure is credible. Besides, the stress-strain curves of the R30 models, which are rectangular concrete column with large radius of round corners, are almost bilinear. This calculated results conform to the expectation and show the present analysis procedure are more suitable than Mander's model (1988) to analyze the compressive behavior of the rectangular concrete column confined by FRP.