Abstract
Lightweight, corrosion-resistant, and longer-lasting composite materials are increasingly used as primary load-bearing materials in structures' design. The cost of rehabilitating structures is lower than that of demolishing and rebuilding them again. Therefore, economical, and eco-friendly materials could extend the life of the structures and reduce the carbon di-oxide footprint on the environment. The purpose of this paper is to present a composite hollow body that can be inserted in reinforced concrete beams. The priority was to use more economical, biodegradable, and recyclable local natural fibers. The goal is to get lighter but stronger beams. The main innovation on this work is the usage of a composite made from natural fiber. A 3D finite element model of the 5 m span beam is developed to see in detail the beam's behavior and the composite reinforcement behavior. A classical reinforced concrete beam is compared to composite shells reinforced one. As a result, the beam is lightened, the deformation is relatively reduced, the traction in concrete is reduced, and the stress in steel bars is increased but remains far from the steel's elastic limit. An experimental work was done based on 40 mm x 40mm x160 mm beams to verify the correlation of the finite element model parameters with experimental results. The results show a good correlation. The weight of the beam 5 m span beam is reduced by 26.65% without affecting its behavior. For the reinforced and non-reinforced 5 m span beams, at a similar deflexion of nearly 0.7 mm, similar stress in concrete of about 2.3 MPa and similar stress in steel bars of about 10 to 13 MPa, the maximal stress in the composite is equal to 0.460 MPa which is insignificant compared to the composite failure stress, which is about 229 MPa. The composite has a long-life and can support the efforts if the beam must be rehabilitated, for example. Consequently, lightened beams can be used in reinforced concrete structures made of non-lightened elements and have the same structural behavior.
Highlights
There have been considerable interests in designing new materials for several specific applications within the past decades, such as building more resistant and lighter structures, thermal insulation, or acoustic insulation
There has been a rising interest in using natural fibers, especially biodegradable ones; applications have spread to automotive and are becoming widely used in civil engineering, aerospace, and biomechanics as well. Examples of such materials include the Alfa plant, which is abundant in North Africa, southern Europe and in Tunisia
The beam is reinforced by four high adhesion lower tension-steel bars having 14 mm as diameter (index (1) in figure 2) and four upper high adhesion construction steel bars having 8 mm as diameter (index (2) in figure 1)
Summary
There have been considerable interests in designing new materials for several specific applications within the past decades, such as building more resistant and lighter structures, thermal insulation, or acoustic insulation. There has been a rising interest in using natural fibers, especially biodegradable ones; applications have spread to automotive and are becoming widely used in civil engineering, aerospace, and biomechanics as well. Examples of such materials include the Alfa plant, which is abundant in North Africa (see Figure 1), southern Europe and in Tunisia. Tunisia possesses substantial resources of Alfa plants with promising physical and mechanical characteristics. These resources can be positively exploited while preserving availability. In terms of the environment, these materials are biodegradable and recyclable
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